Business of the House

Chris Bryant: I beg to move,
	That, at this day's sitting, the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of Ms Harriet Harman relating to the Speaker's Committee on the Search of Offices on the Parliamentary Estate not later than three hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order; such Questions shall include the Questions on any Amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; proceedings may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.
	Since this issue first arose, the House has had a series of occasions on which right hon. and hon. Members have had an opportunity to raise important matters of concern. Last Wednesday, 13 Members took the opportunity to raise points of order on this matter for nearly 20 minutes. Last Thursday, 20 Members raised points on this matter during the 50 minutes devoted to business questions. The Home Secretary then made a statement on the matter and answered questions from 33 Members for a further hour. There was then a five-hour debate on home affairs, during which five Members also took the opportunity to raise their concerns. It is against that context that the business of the House motion allows three hours for us to debate this issue this afternoon.

Kenneth Clarke: Will the hon. Gentleman explain what business, Government or otherwise, he is seeking to protect by moving this motion? We have had the thinnest Queen's Speech for years and years, there is no pressing Government business and we have an extremely long recess. All we are asking is that ideally we should continue debating the main subject of the day until 10 o'clock this evening. Are the Government prepared to allow any controversial subject to be discussed on the Floor of the House any more?

Chris Bryant: The right hon. and learned Gentleman will know that the choice of debates on each day following the Queen's Speech is up to the Opposition. It is the Opposition who have chosen that this afternoon we should debate employment, universities and skills, and housing. If we are protecting business this afternoon, it is that debate, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his colleagues wanted. If the motion is agreed to, and then the 10 pm business of the House motion is agreed to later this evening, today's business will be able to continue past the moment of interruption at 10 pm. I believe that we will be allowing adequate debate of this important matter this afternoon, and I commend the motion—

Douglas Hogg: rose—

Chris Bryant: I give way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman.

Douglas Hogg: The Deputy Leader of the House will remember that on 12 November we had a similar kind of debate on regional Select Committees. He criticised us for not tabling amendments on the timing, saying that if we did he would give them very serious consideration. Why has he not acceded to the proposals that we have put forward today, which were a test of his good faith?

Chris Bryant: I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would not want to question my good faith. In response to him, I should say that I and the Government have considered at length whether the amount of time is appropriate. I know that he has tabled an amendment, and I am sure that he wants to make sure that it is debated and voted on. All I would say is that I commend to the House the business motion as it is on the Order Paper in the name of my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House.

Theresa May: I have to say to the Deputy Leader of the House that not only is the amount of time that the Government are giving for the debate of this motion totally inadequate, but his defence of that business motion was totally inadequate. I am very impressed by the revision and homework that he has done in finding out how many people spoke in the home affairs debate and during the Home Secretary's statement last week, for example, but the business before the House today is about the establishment of the Speaker's Committee and the putting into place of the wishes that Mr. Speaker expressed in his statement to the House last Wednesday.
	The motion before the House today was not on the Order Paper last Thursday, so people were not able to make contributions in relation to the motion that we wish to debate today. In future, the hon. Gentleman should go away and do his homework rather better before he comes to defend an inadequate motion such as this. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) has already pointed out that it was the Deputy Leader of the House himself who, on 12 November, indicated to the Opposition that if we felt that any business motion was inadequate, we should amend it. He said:
	"I am sure that we would have listened to what they had to say."—[ Official Report, 12 November 2008; Vol. 482, c. 778.]
	He now has the chance to put his words into practice—to listen to what has been said. This is an inadequate amount of time to discuss the Speaker's Committee on parliamentary privilege and on the seizure of papers from the office of a Member of this House, which interrupted the ability of that Member to do his job on behalf of his constituents. The Deputy Leader of the House should think again, put into place what he said on 12 November, accept the amendments and give us proper time for debate.

Simon Hughes: Not only do we have today, as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) said, the beginning of a parliamentary year with the lightest Government programme that there has been since this Government were in office, and not only do we have a proposal for this House to sit for fewer days this year than at any time, certainly since 1979 and possibly since the last war, but yet again the Government cannot resist the temptation to try to prevent the House of Commons from debating, in time that is adequate for all voices to be reflected, an issue of great importance. If we cannot have the time to debate whether police can come into this building, when they can do so, on whose authority, what they can take and whether they can interfere with our constituents' links with their Members of Parliament, it is a very sorry state of affairs and a very sorry House of Commons.
	My right hon. and hon. Friends will support the amendment in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) and my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) because we should have time to debate the procedures of this place and to give this matter proper consideration, and because there is plenty of time to debate the Queen's Speech, the VAT reforms and any other matters before Christmas. This is about the Government trying to clamp down on the House of Commons having its say, and I hope that colleagues in all parts of the House will oppose them. This is not the sort of business that we elect Government to do—they should take their hands off and let the House of Commons do its job properly.

Peter Bottomley: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would it help the Deputy Leader of the House for you to ask MPs who want to speak in the main debate to stand so that he can see how many people want to speak?

Mr. Speaker: I call Mr. Hogg.

Douglas Hogg: I beg to move amendment (a), leave out 'three' and insert 'six'.
	I oppose the Government's business motion. The purpose of the amendments is to enable this House to have a proper discussion. What is currently proposed is that the House should have a debate of three hours in total that is on both the business motion and the substantive motion, and that should we decide to vote on the business motion that time will come out of the time allowed for the substantive motion. I am saying to the House that that is profoundly unfair. In any event, the business motion is protected by the ability to move the closure. I am suggesting that the substantive motion should allow the House to debate for six hours. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) is wholly correct when he says that this is the most urgent matter currently before the House.
	I want to make a few very brief points, because other right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak. First, this is essentially a House of Commons matter. The Government are seizing control of the programme in a way that many of us think is wholly wrong. Secondly, and differently—I am now coming back to the point that I made in an intervention on the Deputy Leader of the House—we had a not dissimilar debate on 12 November, and I remember that he intervened on me when I was speaking to oppose the business motion, and said: "Why didn't you put down an amendment; if you had, we'd have given it serious consideration?" Well, we have put down an amendment, and they have not given it serious consideration. I am casting no personal aspersions on the hon. Gentleman, but this matter— [ Interruption. ] The Solicitor-General should not get excited; it does not suit her. This is a matter that goes to the good faith of the Government, and if they do not respond, and respond positively, we will know where they stand on it.
	Finally—this will take just a moment longer—going back to your statement of last Wednesday, Mr. Speaker, you said, in effect, three things: first, that you were going to appoint a special Committee of seven senior and experienced Members appointed by yourself; secondly, that the Speaker's Committee was going to investigate the circumstances surrounding the search and seizure of the offices and papers of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green); and lastly, that the Committee was to report as rapidly as possible. Those were the three elements in your statement. When we go to the business motion and the substantive motion, we find that each of those three requirements has been frustrated by the Government. To start off with, it is not going to be seven senior and experienced Members appointed by yourself. There is no reference to seniority or experience, but there is reference to the Committee having a Government majority. That was not in your statement. We are entitled to have the time to ask why you are being frustrated in that manner.
	The second, and quite different, point is this: when we look at the terms of the substantive motion, we do not find anything about looking at the circumstances surrounding the search and seizure. We find only talk about future rules and processes. We are entitled to know, and we need time to debate, why it is that the Government are again frustrating your wishes in this regard.
	Lastly, and by no means least importantly, you said that you wanted this Committee to report as soon as possible. That is made impossible by the motion, because it provides that the first thing that the Committee does is adjourn. We are entitled to know why the Government are doing that. Well, I can tell you; they have four principles—we have heard a lot about the four principles in this House—and they are something like this: concealment, duplicity, whitewash and cover-up. We have a right to debate the matter fully and properly in this House, and I hope that this House will reject the business motion as unworthy of democracy.

Nigel Griffiths: Unlike the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), I want to proceed quickly and not talk this matter out. I wish to make two brief points. First, if we went straight to the debate now, and even if the Front Benchers took up an hour, there would be time for at least 14 Back-Bench Members to make a contribution and to reflect every shade of opinion in this House. Secondly, which other citizen of this country who was subject to potential criminal investigation and prosecution would be entitled to have a debate in this House—one which I fear might well be prejudicial to those hearings?
	Mr. Speaker, in the face of the concern expressed, you were right to hold a debate, but we have to be careful to ensure that that debate is limited while proceedings may be going on, so as not to prejudice any possible trial. I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to bear that in mind.

Nigel Evans: The intensity of feeling on this issue is demonstrated clearly by the number of Members who are present today. Let us try to think of the last time when the House has been packed at 2.48 on a Monday afternoon. That clearly shows why we believe that having three hours to debate this matter is inadequate.
	When you made your ruling, Mr. Speaker, a number of points of order were raised, which you answered in some cases by saying that there would be a debate during which people could bring up the matters in question. By limiting the amount of time we have for debate, and given the number of Back Benchers who want to get in, the vast majority of us will simply be denied an opportunity to speak in the main debate.
	The Deputy Leader of the House said that it was up to us—the Opposition—what matters were to be debated today, in the Queen's Speech. Then I ask him to give us that opportunity, and ask us what we want to debate today. He will find that we wish to debate the issue that is before us until 10 pm.

Frank Field: Many of our constituents might have been watching these proceedings—

David Taylor: They've switched off.

Frank Field: Precisely. Given that our constituents, like us, think that the matters that we wish to discuss are important, I would make a plea to them that they continue to watch and listen. However, I guess that most of them would think that, however important the matters might be, we could make our points within three hours. It is not necessarily the number of Members who speak, but how we vote that people will judge us by. I make this plea to all hon. Members: to us, this debate is high drama; to most of our constituents, it has already descended into farce. I make a plea that we get on with the business of the House and debate the substantive motions, including the amendment of the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), so that we can get to the guts of the matter and not continue to suffer from this pantomime.

Nicholas Winterton: I am very pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), but I am both saddened and surprised at the attitude that he has taken. I was freely mixing with a range of people in my constituency over the weekend and they view this matter as one of considerable constitutional importance. They also believe that the statement that you made to the House last week, Mr. Speaker, Sir, following the arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), should have a proper amount of time to be debated.
	In opposing the motion, let me say this to the House. Even in Zimbabwe, on 26 January 1982, when Mr. Mugabe's police wished to arrest a Member of the Zimbabwean Parliament, they did not, could not and would not enter the House of Commons in Harare. If they were not prepared to enter because of the constitutional rights and privileges of Members of Parliament there, why should the police enter this House without a warrant and confiscate an hon. Member's belongings?
	Your statement, Mr. Speaker, was filled with a number of matters that I believe the House would wish to debate in detail, not least the one that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) mentioned: your indication that you, and not the Government, would appoint seven Members, and that there would not necessarily be a Government majority. That was absolutely right. The request that you made in your statement has not been granted by the Government.
	Let me say this to the Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House. When the Prime Minister took over from his predecessor, he said that he wished to restore to this House an element of independence and integrity. Are the Government doing that in today's motion? I say that they are not. This motion should be opposed.

Michael Jabez Foster: This debate is a massive smokescreen. I am probably one of the busiest MPs—I am not saying that I am the busiest, but I am one of them—and I receive hundreds of letters and e-mails each week, yet only one constituent has raised the issue with me. This is self-indulgence on the part of parliamentarians who seek privilege over everybody else. If people commit wrongs, they are entitled to be found out.
	It is clear to me that three hours is adequate for the issues to be determined. There will be outstanding issues at the end of the debate, but the essential question is: what is all this about? It is about an Opposition who do not want to talk about the economy or all the other things involved in the inquiry, and who do not want to tell us what they know about illegalities in the civil service. That is what this is about and it is what we will talk about in due course.
	For now, however, all we need is sufficient time to look further into the issues that presented themselves to you, Mr. Speaker. One issue was perfectly clear to me—that two warrants were issued against two establishments and a technicality ensured that a warrant was not issued in respect of the House of Commons. For my part, I cannot see a difference, and three hours is quite long enough to debate no difference.

Richard Shepherd: How does this House defend the freedoms and liberties of all the people of this country if we are unable to defend the freedoms and liberties of this House? That is a theme that has run through our history. This guillotine motion is entirely about House of Commons matters. This is a matter not for the Government or the Executive, but for us as a collective body. When we come to debate these matters, we understand that they are central to our own concepts of the liberty of those whom we represent. To truncate debate on such matters on the basis that anyone who speaks may be representative of the House misjudges what this House is about. The quietest voice from the furthest corner of the House might illuminate something that we have missed.
	Why I argue very strongly that there should be no guillotine on this matter is that it looks improper, in a sense, that the Speaker's own statement, in which he set out the rule he wanted discussed, has been traduced by the motion before us. That is the point, and who moves the motion? It is the Leader of the House, who is also the Minister for Women and Equality—indeed, she has a whole bundle of Executive jobs—so it leaves the suspicion in people's minds that the Government entirely run the whole business of this House. If we reflect, and if we stand as Members of Parliament, we must see that what is happening cannot be in the interest of ourselves, of the standing of Parliament or of those out and beyond the House whom we represent and whose liberties and rights we are here to defend. It cannot be in the interests of the Government either that they effectively tear up what Mr. Speaker said we would be debating today and put in its place a motion that constricts debate and designs what presumably the Government wanted rather than what Mr. Speaker wanted.
	I oppose the motion and ask the House that when we debate it, it will be not a partisan matter, but a matter of this House, its competence and its authority. Why would I vote for a House that is worth nothing?

Bob Spink: I agree with the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) on the guillotine, and in the light of your statement, Mr. Speaker, I believe that the House needs to debate these matters fully. I would argue, however, that today is not the time. We have two privileges to uphold: one is the privilege of this House, but another important principle that is at stake is the independence of the police. It sometimes helps if we allow the police to do their job without interference, pressure, bullying or intimidation, particularly from this House when it is involved, and before the House pontificates at length on those matters. I hope that we will have a debate, but only after the police have done their work. That is an equally important principle, so I hope that everyone who speaks in the debate will not prejudice the police's work.

Brian Binley: You should be ashamed of yourself.

Bob Spink: If the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley), who is shouting from a sedentary position, wants to intervene, I would delighted to give way to him— [Interruption.] It seems, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. Member has not— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I called the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) to speak and he must be allowed to be heard.  [Interruption.] Order. Let me explain to the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) that where the hon. Member for Castle Point wants to sit is his business and no one else's.

Bob Spink: I am very grateful, Mr. Speaker, and I will bring my remarks to an end, as other Members want to speak.
	We must consider both principles that I mentioned, and investigate these matters calmly and in a considered manner, but at the right time.

Adrian Bailey: I support the Government motion, because the time given in it more adequately reflects the priorities of my constituents. When I go to my constituency, I do not hear people talk about whether there should have been a warrant to visit the offices of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green); I hear them talk about housing for low-paid people. In local schools, the talk is about Labour's policies for improving the life prospects of people who have hitherto been deprived of opportunities to go to university. Above all, faced by the credit crunch, both local manufacturers and the employees in their factories are concerned about their future employment prospects and whether they will have a job after Christmas. Those are the priorities of my constituents and the country as a whole, and every opportunity, and the maximum time, should be given to debating them in relation to the Queen's Speech. If we are talking about truncating, we should truncate discussion of House of Commons issues in favour of discussing the issues facing my constituents and other constituents.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: May I inform you, Mr. Speaker, that one of the reasons why the Labour Benches are so gratifyingly full is that we are on a four-line box—a form of Whip that I have never seen before, but one that is a thinly disguised three-line Whip? It is wholly inappropriate that parliamentary business of this kind should be conducted under a three-line Whip, which I hope that many of my hon. Friends will ignore.

Mr. Speaker: I remind the House that two amendments are before us. Amendment (a) has been proposed.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—
	 The House divided: Ayes 234, Noes 308.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Main question put and agreed to.
	 Ordered ,
	That, at this day's sitting, the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of Ms Harriet Harman relating to the Speaker's Committee on the Search of Offices on the Parliamentary Estate not later than three hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order; such Questions shall include the Questions on any Amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; proceedings may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.

Speaker's Committee on the Search of Offices on the Parliamentary Estate

Mr. Speaker: I inform the House that I have selected amendments (b), (e), (c) and (d).

Harriet Harman: I beg to move,
	That, following the search of a Member's office in the Parliamentary Estate by the police and the seizure of material therein, a committee be appointed to review the internal processes of the House administration for granting permission for such action, and to make recommendations for the future;
	That the committee must not in any way prejudice any police inquiry or potential criminal proceedings and that therefore it will be adjourned immediately after choosing a chairman until the completion of any relevant inquiry or proceedings that may follow;
	That the committee have power to send for persons, papers and records; to report from time to time; to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House; and
	That the committee consist of seven members appointed by the Speaker reflecting the composition of the House.
	Mr. Speaker, in your statement last Wednesday, you asked for a motion to set up a Committee to review the matter of the seizure by the police of material belonging to the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). The motion before the House sets up such a Committee, which would have all the powers of a Committee of the House to get papers and evidence, and would adjourn, after choosing a Chair, until after the completion of the police investigation or any court proceedings in this particular case.
	A number of issues are involved. The first is the immediate one of whether the papers and data of hon. Members are properly protected as of now. The second is what led up to the search of the hon. Gentleman's office. The third is whether the important constitutional principles at stake were properly protected in this particular case and whether they are protected for the future.

Andrew Robathan: rose—

Harriet Harman: I shall be giving way, but I wish to develop my argument for a few moments.
	I know that hon. Members want the issue of the search of Parliament to be sorted out now; they do not wish to wait until after the police have finished their investigation. Last Wednesday, Mr. Speaker, in your statement, you told the House that you have reviewed the handling of this matter. You said:
	"From now on, a warrant will always be required...when a search of a Member's office, or access to a Member's parliamentary papers, is sought. Every case must be referred for my personal decision, as it is my responsibility. All this will be made clear in a protocol issued under my name to all hon. Members."—[ Official Report, 3 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 3.]
	That should provide immediate reassurance about the future to those hon. Members who have criticised the consent to the search.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Harriet Harman: I shall give way in a moment, because I know that hon. Members wish to intervene.
	We should remember that at the time consent was given it appears that a magistrates court had issued a warrant to search the hon. Gentleman's home and constituency office. But further to your statement, Mr. Speaker, I can tell the House that I have asked that we consider at our next House of Commons Commission meeting two further matters that should provide even further reassurance to hon. Members: first, whether it should not be a magistrate, but only a High Court judge who would have the power to grant a warrant to carry out a search in Parliament, and, secondly, whether, through the Speaker's counsel, there could be an opportunity for representations to be made to a court considering an application for a warrant to search in the House about the high test that should be applied before a warrant is granted for a search within Parliament.
	Indeed, Mr. Speaker, the Commission could consider a further question: if hon. Members' data and papers are to be protected when they are on the parliamentary estate, should they attract the same level of protection when they are in the Member's home or in his or her constituency office? It is, of course, the material that is at issue here, not the building. This is something that the Commission could consider as you take forward the changes in search procedure that you announced last Wednesday.

Dominic Grieve: I thank the Leader of the House for giving way. She said at the outset of her remarks that she accepted that hon. Members would be concerned that there should be no delay in following up the Speaker's recommendations for an internal inquiry, but does she not realise that by tying it to the police investigation, that is exactly what will happen? Does she not also recollect that, in the case of cash for honours for example, it was up to the Committee to receive representations from the police, if the police believed that there was a reason why the Committee should not pursue its inquiries? It was not the role of this House to fetter the way in which the Committee conducted its business. Why cannot we do that in this instance?

Harriet Harman: As I develop my line, I will answer the points made by the hon. and learned Gentleman, as they also lie behind several of the amendments tabled to the motion that I have put before the House.
	I just want to make one further point that I hope will provide reassurance to hon. Members. Mr. Speaker, you also provided immediate reassurance for Members concerned about police access to the parliamentary computer network, saying that it was your serious responsibility and that you had already taken action and would look further into the matter. So the House should be reassured on that point too.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Harriet Harman: I shall give way later, when I have developed my argument.
	The motion before the House establishes a Committee to start its work as soon as the police investigation is concluded. Mr. Speaker, in your statement on Wednesday, you said that you had decided to refer the matter to a Committee that would report for debate by the House as soon as possible. But let me explain to the House why that must mean not before the police have completed their investigation.
	If the Committee were to be responsible for looking at the process for any search in the immediate future, or at the current protection of data of hon. Members, they could and would need to do that now, but—as I have said—you, Mr. Speaker, have already acted on that. So what remains for the Committee are questions which fall four-square on the same territory as the current police investigation, and the issue for the House is whether the Committee should be conducting an investigation into police action at the same time as the police inquiry of which that action formed a part.

Edward Garnier: Could the Leader of the House confirm that when the motion states that
	"the committee must not in any way prejudice any police inquiry or potential criminal proceedings",
	it is simply a question of embarrassment, rather than of contempt of court? As she will know, contempt of court does not apply until someone is charged before magistrates or summonsed before the Crown court.

Harriet Harman: As an hon. and learned Gentleman, he should know that it is certainly possible for prejudicial statements to be made even before charge. I will develop my argument on that point, because I know that it is most strongly felt by hon. Members.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Harriet Harman: Let me set out my answer to the hon. and learned Gentleman's point.
	There are two problems here. The first is the need for the House to avoid the accusation or perception that we are in any way interfering with the police or breathing down their necks. The second is the need for the House to avoid any inadvertent potential prejudice to any future proceedings in court. What is said and done in Parliament is important. That is why there is concern about the search and seizure. By the same token, anything that we say is influential in criminal cases. We have to look ahead to any future criminal trial. We have to avoid doing or saying anything that could hinder justice—either for the prosecution or the defence.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Harriet Harman: I will press on with my argument because I hope that it is helpful to the House.
	That is why Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries have to be very careful about what they say. Leaders of the Opposition and shadow Home Secretaries have to be careful about what they say too. It is for neither Government nor Opposition to pronounce what the evidence is and whether a crime has been committed.

Andrew Robathan: I understand that the Leader of the House began her legal career with the National Council for Civil Liberties as a human rights lawyer. What does she think that her erstwhile colleagues would think of those weasel words?

Mr. Speaker: Order. Temperate language is what we need, please.

Harriet Harman: I think that I am showing a proper understanding that justice in this country is a matter for police investigation and decision by the courts. When I was a lawyer at the National Council for Civil Liberties, I never misunderstood the difference between the roles of Parliament and the courts, and neither should the hon. Gentleman. The courts are rightly very vigilant about this matter.

Tony Wright: The precedent of the Select Committee inquiry into the so-called cash-for-honours affair has been cited, but we did not have to set that inquiry aside for the duration because the police told us to do so. We did so because we took an independent legal opinion from leading counsel, who said that the danger was that any prosecution would be compromised by anything that happened in Parliament. That was the danger that needed to be avoided.

Harriet Harman: My hon. Friend is right. That is why I asked the House to resist the amendments that would have the Committee start its work now.

Dominic Grieve: I come back to my point: there is no necessity for the House to fetter the Committee because it can take the advice of leading counsel and make up its own mind. One of the issues that will undoubtedly arise when the Committee comes to consider the matter is whether on any showing there is any possibility of a prosecution being brought against anybody. I have always found it very difficult in this matter to see how the law can possibly operate to do that at all.

Harriet Harman: It is not for anyone to substitute their view for the judgment of the Crown Prosecution Service about whether there should be a charge. It will be helpful for the police to recognise that the House will not be breathing down their necks and that we will adjourn the proceedings of the Committee. We are making a strong statement that this matter is one for the police and that the House of Commons will leave them to get on with the job. I know that the shadow Home Secretary, who is also shadow Attorney-General, and the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) understand the importance of this argument and I urge them to acknowledge it and to act in accordance with it.
	In conclusion, I want to set out the four principles that all Members of this House—Government and Opposition, Back Benchers and Front Benchers—should be mindful of and vigilant to protect.

Lynne Jones: I would like some light to be shed on the legal advice that, according to Assistant Commissioner Quick, the Serjeant at Arms took before granting permission for the search of the offices of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware of any reason why that legal advice should not be published? Is she aware of the contents of that legal advice? As Leader of the House, has she obtained legal advice on the same matter herself?

Harriet Harman: If a search was undertaken as part of an ongoing police investigation, it is important that we should not comment on it in this House. [Hon. Members: "Ridiculous."] Hon. Members think that it is ridiculous that we should not comment on an ongoing police investigation, but I shall proceed to say why I think—

Several hon. Members: rose —

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Leader of the House is not giving way.

Harriet Harman: The first principle that I urge the House to be vigilant to protect is that it is essential for the freedom of our democracy that as Members of this House we are able to get on with our work without looking over our shoulders. Secondly, in respect of the rule of law no one, not Ministers, nor Members of this House, is above the law. Thirdly, we need a professional and impartial civil service, and civil servants who feel in conscience that they have to divulge information should be able to do so without falling foul of the criminal law. It was to protect whistleblowers that we introduced the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. Fourthly, there is the principle of separation of the Executive and the legislature on the one hand, from the operation of the criminal justice system on the other. No one in this country wants politicians—whether Government or Opposition—telling the police who to investigate or who not to investigate. In any individual case the police are accountable to the courts and to the independent complaints system.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Harriet Harman: I am moving on to make one further point.
	While the police are accountable, too, to police authorities and the Home Secretary, where anyone who is the subject of an investigation is known to the Home Secretary it is imperative that she makes it clear that she is standing right back from the inquiry, and that is what she has done. I hope that all Members will support all those four principles and will support the motion to establish the Speaker's Committee, which will look into all these matters and make recommendations for the future. I commend the motion to the House.  [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Theresa May: This debate is about one thing and one thing only: to put into practice the wish expressed by you, Mr. Speaker, in your statement to the House on 3 December to refer
	"the matter of the seizure by police of material belonging to the hon. Member for Ashford to a Committee of seven senior and experienced Members, nominated by me, to report as soon as possible. I expect the motion necessary to establish this Committee to be tabled by the Government for debate on Monday. I also expect a report of the Committee to be debated by this House as soon as possible thereafter."—[ Official Report, 3 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 3.]
	That is the motion that we are debating.
	Any motion agreed by the House today must put into practice the wishes of Mr. Speaker expressed in his statement last week, and to do so it must include three points. First, the Committee must be able to look into the seizure of material from the office of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green). Secondly, the membership should be chosen by Mr. Speaker and Mr. Speaker alone. Thirdly, the Committee should meet now and its report should be debated by the House as soon as possible.

Frank Field: Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Adam Ingram: Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Theresa May: No, I want to make some progress before I take interventions.
	I should have thought that it would be simple for the Government to put those points into a motion for the House. Sadly, they have singularly failed to do so. The motion from the Government bears no resemblance at all to Mr. Speaker's statement and the Leader of the House has singularly failed in her defence of the Government's motion.

John Gummer: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that not to carry through in precise measure what Mr. Speaker has asked shows that the Government do not have confidence in Mr. Speaker, and is therefore an unacceptable position for the Government in the House?

Theresa May: I agree with my right hon. Friend that it is unacceptable for the Government to take Mr. Speaker's wishes and actually change the motion so that it does not reflect the wishes of Mr. Speaker.

Frank Field: May I make a suggestion for the right hon. Lady to consider while we are holding the debate and before we come to a vote? If the Opposition are genuine in wanting to uphold the sentiments that Mr. Speaker expressed, does she believe that the best way for the House to come to a mind on that would be for all of us to support the motion tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell)?

Theresa May: Absolutely. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and I will make that same point towards the end of my remarks. On the three points that I mentioned and the motion that the Government have put forward— [Interruption.] It sounds as though a lot of hurried reading of the amendment is taking place. Far from looking into the police's seizure of material belonging to my hon. Friend, the Committee proposed by the Government is merely to review the narrow issue of the internal processes of House administration for granting permission for such action.
	I ask the House to note that the Government's motion makes the immediate assumption that they were right to grant permission for an hon. Member's office to be searched and for material to be seized. What the Government want to discuss is merely the internal processes for granting that permission. The Government propose that the Committee's membership should reflect the composition of the House—in other words, that the Committee should have a Government majority. Can the Leader of the House not understand that, for the Government's own sake, there should be nothing that could suggest that they were trying in any way to rig the Committee's outcomes? The Leader of the House should be in no doubt: if the Committee were set up with a Government majority, it would not have the support of the Opposition.
	Perhaps most serious of all is the Government's attempt to delay the work of the Committee and effectively kick the issue into the long grass. The Committee is to be allowed to meet only to elect a chairman; then it must immediately adjourn, not just until the police inquiry is over, but until any proceedings—that is, criminal proceedings—are over. That could mean that the Committee would not start its work for many months, and possibly not until autumn next year.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Theresa May: I will complete this point before I take any interventions. The motion in the name of the Leader of the House flies in the face of Mr. Speaker's statement. It is not only a gross discourtesy to Mr. Speaker, but a flagrant abuse of the power of the Executive, in view of the wishes and interests of this House. It is a blatant attempt by the Government to pack the Committee, stymie its debate and delay its work until the controversy has blown over. I tell the Leader of the House that this simply will not do. This House—and Parliament—deserves better from its Leader.

Mark Harper: I should like to mention one of the reasons why it is important that the Committee should be able to do its work. My right hon. Friend and I asked the Leader of the House a question at business questions last week, but it has not been adequately answered. We asked whether last week the police were granted access to data belonging to other hon. Members. That has not been properly answered.  [Interruption.] No, it has not been properly answered, and the Leader of the House needs to answer it properly for the House.

Theresa May: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. The Leader of the House referred to the fact that Mr. Speaker said that the issue would be looked into, but—I am very happy for the Leader of the House to intervene on me and confirm this—she did not confirm that the police had not had access to the shared drive or the servers. If they had, they would have had the ability to access every Member's correspondence and e-mails. I invite the Leader of the House to intervene on me and confirm that that was not the case. Her silence suggests either that she does not know, or that she is not able to give the House the assurance that it requires, and that is of concern to each and every Member of the House.

Anne McIntosh: I thank my right hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way. Notably, the same cannot be said of the Leader of the House. Will my right hon. Friend comment on the pertinent question asked by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) about the nature of the legal advice sought? Mr. Speaker, from your statement last week, I understood that the whole purpose of today's proceedings and the Committee work that you are instigating was to find out what processes were in place. Who knows who might be the next right hon. or hon. Member to face similar proceedings? I wish to be satisfied today that we know the nature of the process in place. Will my right hon. Friend give us an answer on that point?

Theresa May: I entirely agree that that is a matter of concern to all hon. Members. Indeed, the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) was entirely appropriate, which is exactly why the review should take place and the Committee should be able to meet and start work immediately, so that Members can be satisfied about the processes that are in place and can ensure that they can do their job and carry on with their work.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Theresa May: I will give way to the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane), then I will make progress.

Denis MacShane: I do not know how much, Mr. Speaker, you enjoy the right hon. Lady acting as your interpreter: "This is what the Speaker wants; this is what the Speaker means". I am not sure that that is a helpful way in which to continue the debate. But on the narrow question of the idea that any Committee set-up reflecting the broad composition of the House would be unacceptable to the Opposition, is it not true also that any Committee set-up representing principally just the Opposition may not be acceptable to the Government? Does the right hon. Lady not understand that there are many right hon. Members here who would be quite independent of the Government and quite critical of them, and that Mr. Speaker will decide, not her?

Theresa May: The right hon. Gentleman referred to the fact that I appeared to be interpreting Mr. Speaker's wishes, but I was quoting  Hansard. It is perfectly clear: Mr. Speaker said that the members would be nominated by him
	"to report as soon as possible."—[ Official Report, 3 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 3.]
	He said, too, that they would look into "the seizure...of material" from my hon. Friend's office. That is the issue for debate today, and that is what the House should put into practice, but the Government motion singularly fails to do so. Let me be clear about what the debate is not about.

William Cash: rose—

Theresa May: I will make a little more progress before I accept any more interventions.
	This whole affair raises a number of questions relating to matters outside the workings of this House: the relationship between the Executive and the police; the responsibilities of the Home Secretary; and the relationship between the Home Office and the Cabinet Office. Those are not matters for this debate. Today, it is for this House to exert its authority and for each and every one of us to consider how we can ensure that the rights of Parliament and of our constituents can be upheld. There will be some people who will ask why we should bother with this—surely no MP is above the law. Of course, that is the case—no Member of Parliament is above the law, and parliamentary privilege has never protected MPs against criminal proceedings.
	There are, however, two key issues at stake. First, MPs must be able to do their job, both in representing their constituents and in holding the Government to account. What we are talking about today is the search of an MP's office and the seizure of material that was fundamental to the ability of my hon. Friend to do his job. Crucially, material held by an MP which is going to be used or is capable of being used in parliamentary proceedings is indeed subject to parliamentary privilege, which we hold not for ourselves on our behalf but for our constituents.

Oliver Heald: Is it not right that the protection that MPs have is that there should be due process of law? Is it not the complaint that, on the basis of Mr. Speaker's statement, there was not a proper warrant when there should have been, and the processes did not work, which is why we must have the inquiry now so that those lessons are learned?

Theresa May: My hon. Friend is entirely right. The Committee needs to meet so that we can learn the lessons of the mistakes that were made in the process that was undertaken that led to the ability to search the office of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Theresa May: I said that I would give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). After doing so, I shall give way to the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), but then I shall make progress.

William Cash: Does my right hon. Friend think that the Leader of the House has started out on a completely false premise, because the operational independence of the police in this context depends on the application of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984? It is a question of law, but does she not agree, too, that under article 9 in relation to proceedings in Parliament, it is well established that the law and custom of Parliament are the first question to be considered, so there is a conflict between the two, and the courts would undoubtedly have decided that this was a matter of parliamentary privilege, and they would never have let the police in the first place if that had been put to them?

Theresa May: My hon. Friend is entirely right; he has considerable expertise in this area.

Gordon Prentice: The Public Administration Committee, which is so ably chaired by my friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), met in private a number of times during the police investigation into the cash for honours affair. Why cannot the Speaker's Committee meet in camera?

Theresa May: The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point. There is no reason why the Speaker's Committee would not be able to meet in private if it considered that the matters before it required it to meet in private.

Tom Levitt: On that point—

Theresa May: No, I shall make more progress.
	I said earlier that we do not hold parliamentary privilege on our own behalf—

Clive Efford: Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Theresa May: No.
	I said that we held parliamentary privilege not on our own behalf, but on behalf of our constituents. The second issue at stake is the relationship of trust between an MP and their constituents—trust that means that constituents feel able to share information with a Member on the basis of confidentiality. Constituents do not give information to their Member of Parliament on the basis that one day it might be pored over by police officers. Parliamentary privilege is not our privilege; it is the people's privilege.
	There is also a practical issue at stake. The House authorities do indeed have responsibility for the House estate, including offices, but the contents of an office—the papers and information in electronic form—do not belong to the House. They belong to the Member, so it was not for the House authorities to consent to the search of my hon. Friend's papers and electronic information. We need to know not just why a search took place without a warrant, but in the absence of a warrant, why it took place without my hon. Friend's consent.
	The work of the Committee is not to decide who should have spoken to whom. It is about these fundamental questions of privilege, an MP's ability to do their job, and constituents' rights to confidentiality.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Theresa May: No. I listened carefully to the arguments advanced by the Leader of the House. She said, as she has done on previous occasions, that the Committee cannot meet because the House cannot run an inquiry concurrent with the police investigation, as the inquiry could prejudice any police inquiry or any criminal proceedings.

George Howarth: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will you reflect on the observations that the right hon. Lady has just made? They are starting to border on being prejudicial to any future inquiry.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Lady is in order.

Theresa May: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
	I was going on to say that of course it would be wrong for the House to prejudice a police investigation, but the Government's argument on this point is false for three reasons. First, I point out the simple practical fact that the Metropolitan police themselves are running an inquiry concurrent with a police investigation. They have an inquiry into the handling of the case, which is due to report in a week.
	However, the more important point is that the Government are wrong to claim that the work of the Committee would prejudice the police inquiry, because the two will be looking into completely different issues. The investigation of the source of the leaks and whether any action should be taken against a civil servant or against a Member is a different issue from the investigation of the rights of MPs over information and resources in their parliamentary offices, the identification of what is needed to do their job, and the consideration of the meaning of parliamentary privilege.

Henry Bellingham: On that point—

Theresa May: I am conscious that a large number of Members want to speak in the debate, so I wish to make progress.
	Either the Leader of the House is unable to understand the distinction that I have outlined, or she understands it but chooses to ignore it because it is inconvenient for the Government. I refer to the point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) in his intervention on the Leader of the House. Should it not be for the Committee to decide what it does and when? Its hands should not be tied by the House. If the police were concerned that the Committee's work prejudiced their inquiry, it would be for them to go to the Committee to explain, and for the Committee to decide whether to continue, just as has been mentioned in relation to decisions taken by the Public Administration Committee. I therefore believe that there is no reason why the House cannot undertake the necessary inquiry without prejudicing the police investigation.

Elfyn Llwyd: Does the right hon. Lady agree that it seems rather strange that we should be discussing the whole idea of prejudicing the inquiry, given that the Government tried to force through the 42-day measure on the premise that we were all going to discuss issues to do with individuals?

Theresa May: The hon. Gentleman has made an interesting intervention.
	I now move on to the issue of why the inquiry needs to be held now. That is because we need to clarify the meaning of parliamentary privilege, who can and cannot grant access to an MP's office and effects and—crucially—where constituents stand on the information given to their Member of Parliament in the expectation of confidentiality. Those questions need to be resolved; they cannot be left hanging in the air until the Government deem it convenient to have a debate.
	In business questions last week, the Leader of the House referred to her four principles on parliamentary privilege; she has referred to them again today. I have to say to her that the four principles that she set out in the piece of paper attached to the note that tried to set up a meeting between her, Government Ministers and Officers of the House last week were not actually about parliamentary privilege—they are general principles. However, the Leader of the House has challenged us to agree with them, so I will take each one in turn.
	I agree that MPs must be able to do their work, that the Opposition must be able to hold the Government to account and that the law and processes must support that—but where was that principle when police seized material from the office of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford? I agree that MPs are not above the law, but no one has ever suggested that they are. I agree that no one should seek to undermine the impartiality and professionalism of the civil service or the operation of the civil service code, but where was that principle when Alastair Campbell was given authority over civil servants? I agree that no one should seek to undermine the operational independence of the police, but there is a difference between operational independence and proper accountability.

Fraser Kemp: Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Theresa May: No. I am not going to give way any more.
	Last week, the Leader of the House implied that operational independence for the police meant that politicians could not direct them in their actions. I am not suggesting that they be directed. But they will not think any the worse of a Home Secretary who asks them awkward questions about what they are doing—questions such as, "Is that a proportionate response?", "Have you consulted the Director of Public Prosecutions?" and "Have you applied for a warrant?" Asking such questions is not improper interference with the operational independence of the police, but the proper exercise of scrutiny by the person responsible to the public for ensuring that the police are doing their job and keeping within the law in doing so.

Andrew Slaughter: rose—

Theresa May: No. I am not going to give way any more.
	Mr. Speaker, I set out earlier why I believe that the Government's motion does not meet the requirements set out in your statement last week. The amendment in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), which is signed by a number of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members, addresses those issues and clearly sets out a proposal that I believe meets Mr. Speaker's statement. For that reason, I will support that amendment if it is moved, and I urge other hon. Members to do so.
	As it has been proposed by the Government, the Committee would be stymied in its remit, packed with a Government majority and silenced when it was needed most. I urge hon. Members to reject the Government's motion and treat it with the degree of contempt with which the Government have treated the House.

Frank Dobson: The situation that we are debating today is serious, and the issues that it raises need to be seriously addressed. If we want parliamentary privilege to be taken seriously by others, we need to address the problems that this case has thrown up. We will not do that if we pursue the course of action taken by Tory Front Benchers—to sidetrack all the debate into scapegoating, finger pointing and blame. The truth is that what happened does not reflect much credit on most of those involved. I suspect that most of them are now feeling, "If only I'd thought that at the time, I would have done something different." However, that does not mean that we will get anywhere by singling out any particular individual for blame. The whole set-up in this place is at fault. We are responsible for the set-up, and therefore responsible for the faults.
	After the Home Secretary, rightly, got sick and tired of persistent leaks from her private office, she asked for a leak inquiry. Cabinet Office officials rightly set up such an inquiry, and then called in the police. There are clearly plenty of precedents for that.

John Redwood: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Frank Dobson: No, I shall not.
	The police proceeded with their investigation and arrested a civil servant, who has made it clear that he was the source of the leaks. That took them to the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who has never denied that he had a sort of standing order with this civil servant to get a continuing—

Damian Green: The Leader of the House suggested that nobody should say anything prejudicial in this case. May I recommend to the right hon. Gentleman that he heed her words, because he has gone way over the line in what he has just said?

Frank Dobson: rose—

Hon. Members: Withdraw!

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let the right hon. Gentleman speak.

Frank Dobson: I have seen the legal representative of the civil servant on television, and his lawyer in effect admitting it, and I understand from what has been said on behalf of the hon. Member for Ashford that he admits that this young man had tried to get a job with him, that he had supplied him with information, and that he had met him several times. I do not know what I am supposed to withdraw. The hon. Gentleman—[Hon. Members: "Withdraw!"]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I ask again that hon. Members allow the right hon. Gentleman to speak.

Bernard Jenkin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. If a right hon. or hon. Member were going to make an attack of a personal nature on another right hon. or hon. Member, it would be in order for him to notify that Member in advance. No such notice has been given.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman concerned is clearly in the House and has an opportunity to rebut the matter, which he has been able to do. The right hon. Gentleman's speech is in order.

Frank Dobson: I go on to say, then—I hope that the hon. Member for Ashford will agree with me—that I am astonished that the police chose to arrest him in these circumstances. I cannot understand why they did not question him or, if they wanted to take it one step further, question him under caution. The police seem these days to be a bit arrest-happy with quite a lot of people, including members of the Labour party and Labour Members in the House of Lords.
	The police then wanted to search the MP's home and his constituency office. I wonder whether they asked him if it would be okay to do so or just proceeded to a warrant. They then decided that they wanted to search his House of Commons office. I do not know whether they asked his permission—in quite recent times Labour Members have given their permission to police who wanted to search their offices—but it appears that they did not and that they did not get a warrant.

Brian Binley: I think that the right hon. Gentleman will know that my predecessor was treated by the police in exactly the way that he is explaining. First, he was asked whether he wished to meet them to discuss a matter that was of national security level. Secondly, he was asked to come to the police station if he wished to discuss that matter. Thirdly, he was asked if he minded if his office was searched. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell me why he thinks that the process this time was so different from that of 2004?

Frank Dobson: I have already said that I am surprised that the procedure was different in the case of the hon. Member for Ashford.
	The police then approached the Serjeant at Arms. I point out to everybody, including commentators outside this place, that the Serjeant at Arms is responsible for the safety and security of Members of this House, and that the mainstay of that safety and security is the Metropolitan police. She therefore has frequent meetings with the Metropolitan police—specifically, the people who used to be the special branch, and are now the anti-terrorism unit. She discusses our safety and the deployment of the police, including armed police, in this place. She is out there to protect us.

Martin Horwood: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Frank Dobson: No, I have given way already.
	It has to be said that the Serjeant at Arms is unlikely to see the Metropolitan police as jackbooted storm-troopers of the police state; she sees them as working colleagues. They may very well have exploited that in their relations with her by not making clear that she was entitled to ask them for a warrant. The police got the consent of the Serjeant at Arms, and went to the offices of the hon. Member for Ashford, where they were challenged by a representative of the Leader of the Opposition, who again, does not seem to have asked whether they had a warrant. The whole situation is a mess, and we are responsible for it.
	Contrary to a lot of the media coverage that seems to suggest that the Speaker makes the rules, the Speaker does not make the rules—we make them, and the Speaker is there to carry them out. The big problem is that the rules are not clear. We all agree that there is something called parliamentary privilege, but hardly anybody agrees exactly what it amounts to. It is apparent from reading articles by apparently learned academics in the news media that they do not agree either on the boundaries of our parliamentary privilege.
	If we are serious about parliamentary privilege, we need to clarify what we mean by it. We should turn it into statute law to show that we take it seriously and that anyone who breaches it will be dealt with seriously. I would also include in such a law the Wilson doctrine that prohibits our phones being tapped. It was not very long ago that the previous Prime Minister was going to undermine that doctrine, and he was only prevented from doing so by a Cabinet revolt. Conventions should not be set aside at the behest of a Prime Minister or any individual, which is why we need to shift the rules on parliamentary privilege to statute law.

Henry Bellingham: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Frank Dobson: No.
	Once we have done that, and only after we have done that, the Speaker, the Clerk of the Commons and the Serjeant at Arms can work out clear procedures for following the rules that we have laid down. Once we have made the rules clear, we will be entitled in conscience to complain if those rules are not followed, but as we do not have a clear definition of parliamentary privilege or a clear explanation of what will be done when parliamentary privilege is threatened, we had better keep quiet until we have done our job, and we should stop criticising the people who have tried to do theirs.

Tom Harris: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Today I returned to my office in the House of Commons, on the Upper Committee corridor, after an absence of some days. I found a letter sitting on my computer keyboard, in my office that had been locked. It is from the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), it is politically partial, it parrots the Conservative line on the matters before the House today and it contains implicit criticism of Ministers, the House authorities, the police and yourself, Mr. Speaker.
	Given the subject of today's debate, I hope that the House will understand that I have some concerns about returning to my office, and opening the door with my key to find such a letter sitting on my computer keyboard. I do not wish to accuse anyone. I would not want to end up with egg on my face—or indeed, bacon—but I would like to ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether it was a House official or a Conservative party researcher who left the letter on my computer, or whether it was something far more innocent. Given the debate, I have every reason to ask how it got into my office.

Mr. Speaker: I will look into the matter.

Simon Hughes: This debate is about an important matter for the House, as everybody acknowledges, hence the large turnout. That is not because we are precious about our rights and liberties for ourselves, but because we hold them on trust for our constituents, as we have all agreed.
	Today, the Leader of the House has come—I have to say this to her—arrogantly and disrespectfully to seek to change what you, Mr. Speaker, asked the House to do in the interests of Parliament, to what she wants the House to do in the interests of the Government. That is not the job of the Leader of the House. She could have tabled the motion without realising the implications and how much it deviated from your wish, but that is unlikely. If it was not unlikely when she tabled the motion last Thursday and then re-tabled it, it must be unlikely today.
	You have indicated, Mr. Speaker, that you have selected all the amendments tabled, including the amendment that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) has tabled, which is not on today's Order Paper and which is available outside. I wonder whether, perhaps at the end of my speech, you might arrange for that amendment to be passed round, as statements are, so that everybody has it before them.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The amendment is on the Order Paper now.

Simon Hughes: One of the things that I think all colleagues point out when we show friends and visitors around the House of Commons is the picture of Speaker Lenthall, one of your predecessors, Mr. Speaker, robustly standing up to the people whom King Charles I sent here in 1642 to arrest colleagues. The colleagues were not here—the birds had flown. Of course, it is not quite the same when police officers come to the door, but the issue is the same: does this place have a right to protect its activities and what are those rights?
	Your great city, Mr. Speaker, and this great city have many citizens who understand the law very well. If the police knocked on the door of one of my constituents in Southwark or Bermondsey, everybody inside would know two basic things. First, they do not have to let the police in unless they have a warrant. Secondly, that applies not only in respect of a warrant for the person in question, but if the police are looking for somebody upstairs.
	By your statement's admission and by the helpful protocol that you have issued today, Mr. Speaker, you have accepted that something went badly wrong in the House of Commons on 27 November. For whatever reason, the authorities did not, as it were, stand up to the police investigation as they should have. You asked us to set up a group of senior colleagues as quickly as possible, to find out what went wrong and to make recommendations. That is what we want to do. Some of us believe that the issue is important enough to allow the colleagues whom you choose from across the parties in the House, with the experience in the House and with the House's rights and privileges, to get on with that job now and not to wait for weeks, months or years, which is potentially the implication of the Leader of the House's motion today.

Nicholas Winterton: Although I entirely agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman has said, does he not believe that the House is entitled to know from whom legal advice was requested before the police were allowed to invade the office of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green)? That is a basic question, the answer to which we should be entitled to know in this debate.

Simon Hughes: I would say the following to the hon. Gentleman. You have made it clear, Mr. Speaker, that various people have responsibility for these issues: yourself, the Serjeant at Arms, in some respects the Leader of the House, the Clerk of the House and those who advise them—Mr. Speaker has counsel and there are Law Officers who are available to be consulted. The hon. Gentleman raises questions that should be answered. If they cannot be answered today, potentially because nobody who can speak in this debate knows the answers, they could be answered quickly and with no prejudice to any inquiry about the hon. Member for Ashford or anybody else.

Alan Beith: rose—

Simon Hughes: Just before I give way to my right hon. Friend, I should say that you have been very clear, Mr. Speaker, that there are times when we cannot discuss matters before the courts because they are sub judice, but that does not apply if nobody has been charged. It is very clear that we are able to have that debate—albeit subject, of course, to proper wisdom and guidance on what is right and wrong, what might be a matter of prejudice, and so forth.

Alan Beith: I put it to my hon. Friend that there is an even more compelling reason for urgency. When I asked the Prime Minister last Wednesday whether he supported Mr. Speaker's decision as set out in his statement—that the police would not be admitted without a warrant—the Prime Minister said that he was waiting for the results of the inquiry. If that is the case—it does not seem to have been embodied in the words used by the Leader of the House, but this was the Prime Minister speaking—Mr. Speaker's decision does not have the support of the Government until the Committee has been able to inquire into these matters, which the motion does not allow until the police inquiries are over.

Simon Hughes: Let me deal specifically with my right hon. Friend's absolutely accurate point. The motion in the name of the Leader of the House is, in case anyone is in any doubt, extraordinary in that respect, as it says
	"That the committee must not in any way prejudice any police inquiry or potential criminal proceedings"—
	of course, we are all agreed on that—
	"and that therefore it will be adjourned immediately after choosing a chairman until the completion of any relevant inquiry or proceedings that may follow".
	The Leader of the House knows perfectly well what "any relevant inquiry" means; the meaning is clear and it could be weeks, months or years. She knows that. Things might not just be thrown into long grass; they could be put off until the other side of the next general election. This is a ridiculous proposal.
	The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), who chairs the Public Administration Committee with great respect and authority, referred to what you, Mr. Speaker, wanted us to do and to what the amendment wants us to do, which is to give the Committee appointed by Mr. Speaker the right to take its own advice and to follow it. If we are talking about senior and experienced colleagues, it is beyond comprehension that they will be unable to take advice, follow it and act appropriately.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Simon Hughes: It is completely wrong for the Leader of the House to seek to tie the hands of the House and this Committee for an indefinite period; she knows the implications of that, and it is absolutely not honouring what you, Mr. Speaker, asked us to do last week.

Norman Lamb: rose—

Denis MacShane: rose—

Simon Hughes: I give way to my hon. Friend.

Norman Lamb: Is it not also unfair on individuals such as the Serjeant at Arms and the Clerk for these matters to be left hanging in the air unanswered? Is it not in their interest that legal advice be made available so that everyone can see straight away exactly what happened and how those decisions were made?

Simon Hughes: That is a good argument, demonstrating exactly how we should proceed.
	I said last week that I hoped Members across the House had affection and respect for you and your post, Mr. Speaker, just as much as they do for the Serjeant at Arms and others, but it is quite wrong to leave this matter in the air. My hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) is absolutely right that we need to resolve this matter. If a Committee is set up this week as appointed by you, Sir, it can start work this week and do so because it understands the rights and interests of the individuals concerned.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Simon Hughes: I will give way only one more time and then I am going to finish, as many other colleagues wish to speak.

Denis MacShane: Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether he as Front-Bench spokesman for the Liberal Democrats shares the position advanced from further down the Opposition Benches, which I found absolutely extraordinary, that if the relevant amendment were adopted tonight, this Committee should meet in secret?

Simon Hughes: Let me make it clear that the amendments that we are talking about—amendments (b), (c) and (d) are not in the names of any Front Bencher of any political party. The amendment that I am speaking to is supported by Back Benchers of the three major parties. I should hope that that would give it some authority, although senior colleagues in all the parties are also involved, which I hope provides even more authority. People with great experience of the House and of the relevant issues are also involved. I support that, which is why my hon. Friends and I will support the amendments at the end of the day.  [Interruption.] As to the secrecy issue, that is a matter for the Committee, as the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) said. Committees of this House, including a Committee appointed by Mr. Speaker, would take the decision. The instinct would not be to meet in secret, of course, but the Intelligence and Security Committee, for example, meets in secret. Clerks are here, and people to advise us, and it is nonsense to imagine that seven senior colleagues cannot get on with the job and deal immediately with those matters that can be so dealt with, and matters that become sub judice—

Denis MacShane: Secrecy?

Simon Hughes: I have dealt with secrecy. The answer is that all Committees have the power to meet in secret for some of the time. Nobody—including the right hon. Member for Maidenhead—has suggested that the Committee should meet in secret all the time. If we are holding the police to account, we will want them to put their argument in public, because some of us believe that they might not have acted appropriately either. They are not above the law, just as we are not, but the activities, communications and possessions of those elected to represent the citizens of Britain need to be protected.

Richard Younger-Ross: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Simon Hughes: No, I must make progress.
	None of us wants to send out the message that there is never a time or place for the police to come into this building and carry out their activities. That is not our argument. However, you, Mr. Speaker, above all, are the guardian of processes and procedures, which safeguard people's rights and liberties. Whether it is the European convention on human rights, which some people support, or the traditional rights and liberties, they are governed by process as well as substance. Process matters, and it seems to many of us that the process failed.
	The Government have done some good things—and have understood, at some stage, how to defend the rights and liberties of the public—but their regular fault is not being able to let go of power being transferred to Parliament. They persistently seek to manipulate what might be the broader interests of Parliament. The other day, in relation to Select Committees, which could have been more representative of the regions of England, they insisted that the Government had to have their majority and their way. I hope that Labour Back Benchers—I listened to the speech of the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson)—realise that the question is whether we stand up for Parliament and the right of the Speaker of the House of Commons to have people deliberating independently of Government influence, or give in yet again to the Government having their way over all our procedures. We were elected to stand for the independence of this place. I hope that colleagues on both sides of the Chamber will support the amendment and say to the Government, "I'm afraid that this is not your business. Hands off."

Gerald Kaufman: After a chance conversation last week with a respected Conservative Member of the House, I have followed this issue with special care. After studying what I believe to be all relevant material, I have concluded that both the motion and the controversy are unnecessary, and that the motion is a waste of the House's time.
	The situation is as follows. A civil servant, Christopher Galley, has been arrested for persistent leaking of information from the Home Office. He has admitted that on television, and says that what he did was the right thing to do. The shadow Home Secretary has accepted what Mr. Galley says, and says that he should be dismissed from his post. But part of what Mr. Galley did was to communicate information to the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), and it was on that basis that the police arrested him. As far as I can tell, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) said—I quote her words this afternoon—that, within that situation, the hon. Member for Ashford was "doing his job". Therefore, many of the allegations that have been made about the situation seem to have been accepted on all sides. It is a question of what is done as a result of them.

Martin Horwood: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Gerald Kaufman: Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to continue for a moment?
	If it is true that the civil servant did that—as he said that he did, as the right hon. Member for Maidenhead said that he did, and as the shadow Home Secretary said that he did—it was incumbent on the police to arrest Christopher Galley, and there is a case—

Several hon. Members: rose —

Gerald Kaufman: May I be allowed to develop my argument? There is consequently a case for the police having arrested the hon. Member for Ashford. The hon. Gentleman's party, and sections of the press, have caused a ludicrous furore about this arrest and its consequences—

Dominic Grieve: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Gerald Kaufman: I will certainly give way to the hon. and learned Gentleman in a moment.
	The hon. Gentleman's party and sections of the press seem to be seeking to create a new privilege for Members of Parliament, which has never existed before and ought not to exist now—namely that it is in some way a breach of parliamentary privilege for the police to search the office of a Member of Parliament without a warrant, and that a Member of Parliament's correspondence with his or her constituents has some special privilege which the police have violated. All that is nonsense.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Gerald Kaufman: I will give way to the shadow Home Secretary.

Dominic Grieve: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman.
	Since the passage of the Official Secrets Act 1989, the leaking of material not concerning national security has ceased to be a criminal offence. On what basis, therefore, is a civil servant arrested for that, and on what conceivable basis is my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) arrested? If the right hon. Gentleman starts by asking himself that question—which relates to a gift to civil liberty from the last Conservative Government—he will start to conclude very quickly that the basis for the police's erupting into this place and searching a Member of Parliament's offices is shaky in the extreme. That is why he should be very concerned about what has happened, particularly because all the normal processes and protections that should have operated—including the consulting of the Director of Public Prosecutions—never occurred.

Gerald Kaufman: What puzzles me, in view of that bout of rodomontade from the hon. and learned Gentleman, is why he says that Christopher Galley should be sacked, because Christopher Galley appears to have been doing something which is hugely praiseworthy.

Dominic Grieve: rose—

Gerald Kaufman: No, I will not give way again at this stage. I shall see whether I have more time later. What I want to say is this—

Rob Marris: On this very issue, may I say to my right hon. Friend—

Dominic Grieve: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I did not say that Christopher Galley should be sacked; I said that—

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order; it is a matter for debate.

Gerald Kaufman: The hon. and learned Gentleman has been widely quoted by the press as having said that the man should be sacked— [Interruption.] He was quoted by the Tory press, and I see no reason for that denial.
	All the parliamentary documents that I have been able to examine, including "Erskine May" and Standing Orders, contain nothing relevant to this controversy, and confirm no privilege of any kind in such circumstances. The nearest we can come to anything relevant to this huge unwarranted fuss is contained in the excellent briefing for this debate prepared by the House of Commons Library. A statement by one Professor Bradley—

Martin Horwood: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Gerald Kaufman: I will see how the timing goes.
	Professor Bradley, professor of constitutional law at Edinburgh university, says that there is, effectively, protection for MPs' correspondence in certain circumstances, but this is no more than a common-law right based on case law. In fact, the police had a perfect right to search the hon. Gentleman's correspondence without a warrant, and indeed without anyone's permission.
	The shadow Home Secretary spoke of a statute that was "a gift from the Conservative party". Let me quote from another statute that was a gift from the Conservative party, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Section 18(1) states that, following arrest,
	"a constable may enter and search any premises occupied or controlled by a person who is under arrest for an arrestable offence, if he has reasonable grounds for suspecting "—[Interruption.]
	This is a Tory law. Let me continue.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Gerald Kaufman: Let me finish my sentence, for God's sake.
	A person
	"who is under arrest for an arrestable offence, if"—
	Let me finish this sentence.  [Interruption.] It continues that the constable may enter and search any premises if
	"he has reasonable grounds for suspecting that there is on the premises"— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I ask Members to allow the right hon. Gentleman to speak.

Gerald Kaufman: The sentence continues:
	"that there is on the premises evidence, other than items subject to legal privilege,"
	relating to their offence or
	"some other arrestable offence which is connected with...that offence"
	or some other offence. That is a Tory law saying that once somebody has been arrested their premises can be searched without a warrant.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Gerald Kaufman: May I proceed for a moment?
	The police did what they had a perfect right to do under a statute passed by the very party that is trying to con us all into believing that some impropriety has been committed when no impropriety has been committed by anyone, either in the police or with responsibilities in this House. Yes, both Mr. Speaker and the Serjeant at Arms have behaved with perfect propriety in this matter, and it is a scandal that they are being reviled. In particular, those who have always hated—

Several hon. Members: rose —

Gerald Kaufman: No, I will not give way, as I have only two minutes left. Those who have always hated the idea of the current Speaker occupying the Chair of this House have abused this situation to seek further to undermine him.
	What I say to the House of Commons is this: the Tory party has created a bogus controversy about the abuse of privileges that do not exist and the need for a warrant that is not required. We are wasting this afternoon when it could have been used for this House to debate serious and relevant issues about which our constituents care deeply. They do not care in the slightest— [Interruption.] These interruptions show what the Tories believe about whistleblowing and free speech. They do not care about free speech. They want to divert the electorate's attention from the real issues to this bogus issue of what the hon. Member for Ashford did or did not do, about which, frankly, our constituents do not give a damn.

Menzies Campbell: I am grateful to see that amendment (e) stands not only in my name, but in the names of Members from all parts of the House.
	I wish it had not been necessary to table this amendment. It is not just the recollection of the precise language that you, Mr. Speaker, used last Wednesday, but our recollection of the spirit in which your suggestion was received, that makes me believe that the motion before us does not properly reflect what you intended or what the House believed to be right.
	I think we can agree that we are in unique and disturbing circumstances. Earlier, some Members were rather dismissive of the importance of the issues we are discussing, pointing to our overwhelming obligation to represent our constituents on issues such as economics and council housing, but I firmly believe the matters we are discussing are precisely what give us the power and the influence to deal with issues such as economics, council housing and the like. Our responsibilities involve both the scrutiny of Government and the redress of grievance. If we cannot be confident that our communications with our constituents are confidential, there is necessarily an inhibition in our ability to fulfil those responsibilities.
	There has been much discussion about the operational independence of the police, but that cannot be interpreted as being a shield against accountability. The police are accountable for their actions to the Home Secretary, and the Home Secretary is, in turn, accountable to this House of Commons. It is also said—I have said it myself—that we are not above the law, but that does not mean that we can be subject to illegality. It does not mean that we can be treated differently from other citizens. Equality before the law is a matter not only of responsibility, but of right, duty and privilege.
	It is profoundly disappointing that the motion does not meet what is required. The remit is far too narrow—this House is surely entitled to investigate the whole circumstances surrounding this unfortunate affair. The time scale it sets out is risible; can one imagine what the public's response will be when we tell them that this important Committee, which is made up of seven wise men and women, has met and appointed a Chairman, but has then adjourned indefinitely? That is a real indication of hands-on government; we will be laughed out of court if that is how we proceed, but that is what the motion will impose upon us.
	If the Committee chooses to sit in private, it will do so in exercise of its judgment. The whole point about your being encouraged—permitted, if you like—to pick seven experienced Members of the House, Mr. Speaker, is that they will have exactly the judgment and experience to know when it is necessary to meet in private. The amendment asserts that the Committee would be subject to our normal rule of sub judice.
	The motion's third defect is that it would restrict your discretion, Mr Speaker. What is the point of that? Why do the Government believe that they must have a majority in this matter? I never thought I would hear myself make this next point. When Opposition Members get concerned about civil liberties, the often repeated remark we hear is, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." If the Government have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear from seven independent Members of Parliament chosen by you, Mr. Speaker.
	In this matter, the Leader of the House has special responsibilities. She is a Government Minister, but she also has responsibilities to the House, so I ask her to reflect on something. It is generally accepted that John Biffen and Robin Cook, both, sadly, no longer with us, were the epitome—the best examples—of Leader of the House in recent times. What would John Biffen and Robin Cook have done in similar circumstances? I believe that they would have asserted the independence of this House of Commons.
	This motion's purpose is to deal not only with the issues of remit, membership and the ludicrous imposition in relation to time, but to provide Members of this House of Commons with an opportunity to assert their independence and that of the House. They could, as an alternative, subordinate themselves to the Government, but we will give them the opportunity to vote for independence.

Andrew MacKinlay: I shall not be giving way, because of the time constraints. I wish to kick off with some slightly controversial comments. First, I challenge people to reflect on the fact that if this had happened in Moscow or Minsk, there would have been one hell of a row and the British ambassadors would have been making representations. Secondly, leaks are food and drink to me as a Back-Bench Member of Parliament, and I do not want to stop them coming to me—I do not say that in a flip way, because it is very important. My only flip point is to ask people to send me this information on rice paper, so that I can eat it before the police get it. I am open all hours to leaks.
	This is a serious matter. We need to support and endorse the office of Speaker, and ensure that it is properly facilitated over the next 10 or 20 years, because as part of the increasingly political role of the Speaker—it is not party political, but it is political—he or she must safeguard the rights and interests of this House and, I believe, of our democracy. I urge hon. Members to read the Speaker's document that has been handed round, because the protocols set out new modalities for dealing with what are the ancient rights and duties of the Speaker to protect our interest. I commend it to the House. Some aspects may be new, but the principle is that the Speaker is the safeguard in respect of two things—first, the rights and independence of the House of Commons, and second, the idea that Members are not above the law. When I criticised something that a colleague—he is no longer in his place—had said earlier, he said, "Well, what about paedophilia?" I said that if an hon. Member were guilty of a serious crime, such as pushing drugs or being a member of the Mafia, the Speaker could take cognisance of a legitimate representation made to him by law enforcement officers and would say, "Yes, of course you must proceed forthwith." The role of the Speaker is to be a safeguard, and that is what we must ensure. Let us kill the lie now: no one is asking for special privileges for Members of Parliament. We want any bad Member to be prosecuted with vigour, but we need to safeguard people from arbitrary action by the executive arm of Government.
	I remember people laughing at me when I protested when we did away with Sessional Orders. That was treated with levity by Members, but those Sessional Orders reaffirmed the point that people must not interfere with this place. I hope that the House returns to the proposals made in 1999 that people who give evidence to this House and its Committees should not be influenced or leaned on by anyone else and should tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as happens in the Congress of the United States.
	The Bill of Rights, which too few Members have studied, makes it clear that this place has comity with the courts. That is a very important principle. What is more, the logical interpretation of article 9, which says that no court shall be able to look into the deliberations of this House, must extend to our documents. In 1689, Members of Parliament did not have the same volume of documents or technology as we have now. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) said, we should think about putting that protection into statute.
	On 4 December, the Home Secretary read out in good faith what she understood to be the reasons for the arrest of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). He got up and said that those were not the reasons why he was arrested, and that he had the document giving those reasons, given to him by the Metropolitan police. The Home Secretary said that that was what she had been told by the police. What a cavalier approach from the police, in their disregard of Parliament and of the Home Secretary. I find it breathtaking that she did not think that she should be indignant about that. She got it wrong, through no fault of her own, but because of the complacent arrogance of the Metropolitan police.

Gordon Prentice: Will my Friend give way?

Andrew MacKinlay: I shall make an exception for my hon. Friend.

Gordon Prentice: The Metropolitan police told the Home Secretary, in a letter dated 3 December, that a warrant is not needed to search a parliamentary office. We now have the Speaker's protocol, which says that in cases of the police wishing to search in Parliament, a warrant must be obtained. How does my Friend square those two statements?

Andrew MacKinlay: Mr. Speaker is correct, and he has reaffirmed what must always have been the norm. He has restated the modalities and what will happen from now on—perhaps he should paint that on the eyelids of the Metropolitan police.
	I support the amendments because of the need for urgency. I understand that the policeman in charge of this is called Quick. Well, I predict that there will never be a slower man. We need only look at the case of my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Hain). It took 14 or 15 months before he was told that there was no case against him. We all knew that, but it was dragged out, and these blighters will drag this case out too. They know that they can kick it into touch until after the next general election. In any event, I am absolutely certain that the hon. Member for Ashford will not be charged. I come back to article 9 of the Bill of Rights. It will be impossible for a prosecutor or defence counsel to deal with the matter without referring to intent. If individuals have certain information, it relates to their work as a Member of Parliament or to their deliberations in Parliament, so the case will not go anywhere. I know that, and the police know that, but they are failing to recognise that they have bitten off more than they can chew and that they have trespassed on our rights and independence.
	It was put out that this was a matter of national security. Of course, it is not—everyone knows that—because if it was, there would be action under the Official Secrets Act. Under the clerkship of Mr. Bill McKay, there was an attempt by the Ministry of Defence police to come in here and get one of our Committee Clerks, who had received some unsolicited secret information. Mr. Bill McKay saw to it that it was made quite clear to the police how far they could go. I understand that our Clerk was questioned under caution. That was the end of the matter—they backed off—but they have tried it before and it is time that we asserted and reaffirmed our rights and duties.
	I was very grateful when Roger Sands, the previous Clerk, made the importance of article 9 quite clear to Lord Justice Hutton. To Lord Justice Hutton's credit, he acknowledged those rights and acknowledged that in his inquiry he could not trespass on the proceedings of Parliament. That was an important acknowledgment, generously given by the courts. They understand article 9, but the problem is that too many hon. Members do not understand the importance of article 9 and the Bill of Rights. We fought civil wars to create it and overturned a king. King Billy was not all bad; he had some redeeming features, and they need to be reaffirmed today.
	I urge hon. Members to stand up for Parliament, to support the amendments and to ensure that full exposure and examination is given to the tawdry events of last week.

Michael Howard: It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), and I entirely endorse what he said.
	I hope to be brief and I want to make just two points. First, I endorse what was said by my right hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House, by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) and most eloquently by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) about the differences between what Mr. Speaker said on Wednesday and what the Government motion provides for today. I do not need to go through the differences.
	The Government are inviting the House to overrule Mr. Speaker. That is the long and the short of it. What Mr. Speaker said on Wednesday about the terms of reference of the inquiry, its composition and its length was right, whereas the provisions of the Government motion are wrong. They seek to overrule Mr. Speaker, and I cannot recall an occasion when the independence of the Speaker and the independence of this House have been drawn into sharper focus. The House has an opportunity this afternoon to stand up for its liberties and independence. I hope that it will do so by voting for the amendment proposed by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife.
	My second point is that in his statement to the London Assembly last Wednesday, acting commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said that the Metropolitan Police Service was called in by the Cabinet Office
	"to investigate suspected criminal offences in relation to a substantial series of leaks from the Home Office potentially involving national security and the impeding of the efficient and effective conduct of government."
	I particularly want to draw the House's attention to that last phrase. So far as I am aware, it has never been a criminal offence to impede the efficient and effective conduct of government and nor should it be. I do not think that the police should have been called in to investigate on that basis, and they should not have agreed to do so.
	I have written to Mr. Ian Johnston, the chief constable of the British Transport police who is carrying out an inquiry into the police's handling of the matter, and asked him to consider this point in his inquiry. I have written to the Minister in charge at the Cabinet Office to ask who in the Cabinet Office called in the police on that extraordinary basis and whether the Minister authorised or knew of that action.

Iain Duncan Smith: I do not want to distract my right hon. and learned Friend, but he has just made a point that is worth dwelling on for a second. He reminds us that the police themselves have started an inquiry. How is it that the House of Commons will not be allowed to inquire, because of a mistaken view of what is sub judice, yet at the same time the police can inquire into their actions without fear or favour?

Michael Howard: My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point to which there is no answer.
	What has happened over the past 10 days or so diminishes our democracy and the rights not of ourselves as Members of the House, but of our constituents who send us here.

Clive Efford: rose—

Michael Howard: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman before I come to the end of my remarks.

Clive Efford: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way, although usually Members resume their seat when another Member speaks—he has been here long enough to know that. [Hon. Members: "Get on with it."] Excuse me.
	If the principles that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has just applied to the leaking of information had applied when Sarah Tisdall and Clive Ponting were prosecuted, does he believe that those prosecutions would have gone ahead?

Michael Howard: I am afraid that, as was only to be expected, the hon. Gentleman fails to understand the difference between the Official Secrets Act and what is under discussion in relation to my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford.
	For the reasons given earlier in the debate, we need the Committee that Mr. Speaker proposed last Wednesday, not the feeble substitute for it that the Government are offering us today. That is why I urge Members to vote for the amendment proposed by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell).

Frank Field: I am pleased to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and I promise to be even briefer than he was. I rise to support the motion tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) for two reasons.
	I do not think that the initial stages of the debate went as well as they should have done. We hope that our constituents have some interest in what we do in this place, but they would have found it impossible to understand the first three quarters of an hour of our deliberations. It was wholly proper for the Government to put a time limit on the debate and we should have accepted it and got on with the debate.
	A consensus is emerging from the debate and I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House is listening to it. If she responds to it, we may all come out of the debate with real credit. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) pointed out, one of the problems is that many of our constituents, and at least some of us, are confused about what our privileges are and why we have them. It would not only be useful for them to be set out again but, as the shadow Leader of the House said, it might be good to see whether we should move to a statutory basis for those privileges. Their purpose is not to boost us and our egos but—we hope—to allow us to carry out our duties in a way that furthers the interests of our constituents.
	My second point is that the motion tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife manages to divide the two issues that concern the Government. The first issue, with which I think my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House agrees, is that we need to take note of what our privileges are, why we have them and how we should protect them.
	Running alongside that, however, is the question of whether there was something different about the leak to the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), and I hope I shall not cross the line in what I am about to say. I draw a distinction from my experience. I was not a Member of Parliament at the time but an outsider, so I should have been treated differently—as I was.
	The previous Labour Government had a commitment to introduce child benefit. They decided to rat on the commitment, and papers were leaked to me showing that members of the Cabinet were not being totally truthful to one another. The Government threatened all sorts of things, through the Official Secrets Act and so on, but were far too sensible to go down that route. The Bill was not only introduced but became an Act. In addition, the Government spent huge resources on child benefit and, in the general election, said that it was one of their greatest achievements, so sometimes leaks can have a very good effect on Governments.
	At some stage, the House needs to look at the circumstances of the leak relating to the hon. Member for Ashford, which I read about in the papers. My really good Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) says that he would love everything to be put on rice paper. I must say that if I got a whole series of leaks from someone whom, it was alleged I had employed, and with whom I had contact, I as a Member of Parliament might question what was going on, particularly if I thought that that person might wish to further their career in the Opposition party. I beg Opposition Members to consider that point; it is not the usual suspects who are expressing concern about the issue. I do not usually regard myself as one of the usual suspects, and I am concerned about the matter. I make that point because I imagine that many outsiders following the debate will be concerned about the issue. It will not go away; it can come up in different circumstances. I think that it should be pursued.
	I make the following plea to my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House: the shadow Leader of the House has said that she is withdrawing the Opposition's official amendment, so there is a chance for the House to come together on the amendment of the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife. If we did that, we might just scoop some credit from our constituents for this affair.

David Davis: I want to raise two sets of points about the proposal. I support amendment (e), tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), and I agree with everything he said in his excellent speech.
	Everybody agrees that nobody is above the law—not Members of Parliament, the police or the Government. I will not spend long discussing the police; I just point out the coruscating comments made about them by Geoffrey Robertson 'QC' last week, which the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) reiterated. As for Members of Parliament, I cannot find an example in the past century of a Member of Parliament who has escaped the law, or proper prosecution, as a result of privilege, and I do not expect that to change as a result of what we do today.
	I come to the point made by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman); I am sorry to say that he is not present. [Hon. Members: "He's over there."] Good; he may want to pay attention, because he said something that is completely wrong. When talking about the sequence of events that led to today's debate, he said that it was incumbent on police to arrest Galley for what most of us would view as a disciplinary offence. Frankly, I find that use of the offence of misconduct in public office very worrying. I received an e-mail today—perfectly legally—from a recently retired senior police officer, who said the following about misconduct in public office:
	"This is a catch-all or fall-back, flavour of the month, supposed offence that the Met, Thames Valley and at least one other police force"
	often pursue. He continued:
	"They have used it to contrive allegations of criminal conduct against a large number of public servants. Overwhelmingly, those investigated have faced years of debilitating investigation that has damaged their lives as well as their careers and the lives of their families but have faced no criminal charges of any kind or, even, disciplinary charges related to the supposed misconduct investigated.
	In the vary rare convictions for the supposed serious criminal offence, the sentences have been the lightest tap on the wrist and all costs have had to be met by the Crown."
	He goes on to assert that more than 50 civil servants have faced that process.
	I do not know whether or not that is true, but I must tell the Leader of the House that the Government should look at this carefully. If our Government or, more accurately, our police authorities are using that law as a weapon of intimidation that almost never comes to fruition, the country should be ashamed of that.

Dominic Grieve: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if that is happening, it is entirely contrary to the intention expressed in Parliament in 1989, when the revised Official Secrets Act was enacted, that, save in cases of national security, it would be an internal disciplinary matter? The departure from those principles enunciated from the Dispatch Box by the then Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, is an extraordinary development that undermines civil liberties in this country.

David Davis: My hon. and learned Friend is entirely right.

Gerald Kaufman: The right hon. Gentleman, in discussing the appropriateness of arrest, seems to be making a persuasive point, but it applies beyond the situation that has led to today's debate. For example, what about the arrest of Ruth Turner, an aide at No. 10 Downing street, to whom the police went in the early hours of the morning? They took her away, and did not allow her to get dressed, except in the presence of a police officer, but then there were no charges against her at all.

David Davis: There were Members on this side of the House who criticised that action at the time: two wrongs do not make a right.
	Returning to the point that I was making, not only did we receive that piece of evidence from a retired police officer but, only two weeks ago, we heard about the case of the journalist, Ms Murrer. The judge dismissed the case against her, saying that vast amounts of legal writ from Britain and Europe state that it should never have been brought because of protection under articles 9 and 10. If a journalist can receive that protection, surely a Member of Parliament can do so. That point is of some note when we look at the interpretation of privilege by ourselves and by the authorities under two laws passed in the past couple of decades. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, for example, specifically protected editors and the files and records of editors and journalists. We did not give that protection to ourselves, because we thought that we already had it. Similarly, when the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, to which the Leader of the House referred, was passed, we gave protection to whistleblowers who approached journalists. There is no such protection for whistleblowers who approach Members of Parliament. That is an absolute flaw in our laws, and it must be put right. It cannot be put right by a Standing Order, but it must be put right at some point in future.
	I wish to read a brief quotation to the House:
	"The privilege of freedom of speech enjoyed by Members of Parliament is in truth the privilege of their constituents. It is secured to Members not for their personal benefit but to enable them to discharge the functions of their office without fear of prosecution, civil or criminal."
	Those are the words of the House of Commons Privileges Committee in 1939, ruling on the Duncan Sandys case. I remind the House that he was threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act not simply because he had received highly sensitive information about military weaknesses in the country but because he refused to help the authorities to identify the source of the leak. The Privileges Committee ruled in his favour, and ruled that he could not be prosecuted.
	We have to create a Committee today, hopefully under the amendment that I support, that will address that issue. Let us remind ourselves of what happens elsewhere in Europe. I am the last person to draw European analogies in the House of Commons, but the simple truth is that those countries that have had totalitarian Governments in the past invariably have absolute privilege, including protection from arrest. A German MP cannot be arrested without a motion from the Bundestag, and that arises from previous abuse and intimidation of German Members of Parliament. I am not recommending such privilege here, as that can in turn be abused. But what we have is one of the weakest sets of protections of democracy, as they should be called, in Europe.
	What should we ask the Committee to do? What should allow the police to go through the files and data of a Member of Parliament and, therefore, of his constituents, and not just of his constituents, but of legitimate whistleblowers who come to the Member of Parliament in the public interest? First, the crime should be serious and specific. It should not be minor—we should not be followed to catch us on speeding offences so that the police can go through our files. The charge should not be "conspiring to commit misconduct in public office", which is vague and a general catch-all. That should not be acceptable to the Speaker of the House of Commons.
	Secondly, there should be solid evidence. If the MP has not been charged—my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) still has not been charged, and I do not think the young man involved has been charged either—that almost certainly means obtaining explicit approval from a Law Officer: the Attorney-General or the Director of Public Prosecutions.
	Thirdly, and very importantly—a point that we have not addressed before—the charge should not relate to the Member of Parliament's legitimate parliamentary activity. The charge in the Duncan Sandys' case was serious disclosure of official secrets about military preparedness, yet it was ruled an appropriate parliamentary action, risky though it was. History proved that judgment right. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford did not disclose anything so sensitive, and everything he did disclose was entirely proper in pursuit of his duties in holding the Government to account.
	Finally, the intrusion on the constituent's privacy must be necessary, not some further fishing expedition to see what the police can find. What will be the feelings of every whistleblower who speaks to a Member of Parliament if there is a fishing expedition? Again, that can be assessed only by an appropriate Law Officer.
	The assault on privileges that we are discussing today is serious and, if we are not careful, it will set a very serious precedent for the future. No intrusion for a minor offence should be allowed. If we allow that, it will turn out to be disastrous. It will fatally undermine the last vestiges of power in the House. It will lead to intimidation of decent whistleblowers who are standing up for what they see as the public interest. It may not quite make speaking the truth illegal, but it will make finding out the truth illegal.

Keith Vaz: This has been an important debate with some outstanding speeches, in particular those of the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay). I spent most of the early 1980s touring unwinnable seats with my hon. Friend, trying to be selected. In those days there were only unwinnable seats to fight and he always won the contests. If he was on the form that he was on today, it is no wonder that he won on those occasions. I wish I had some documents to leak to him so that he could use them.
	The Speaker has made it clear what his mind is in relation to the debate. He was right to wait until Parliament resumed last Wednesday before he made his announcement to the House. That is where such announcements ought to be made—first and foremost, to Members of the House. He was also right to suggest the creation of a Committee of wise persons. That is the right approach to take on a matter of such importance and seriousness. The Government's motion concedes that, but it is different from what the Opposition and the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife want. The Government want the matter delayed until after the conclusion of proceedings, if any, against the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green).
	The Government have nothing to fear from an inquiry. The Home Secretary, in her very good statement last Thursday, made it clear what information she had, what information she received and what action she took. In his intervention on her, the former Home Secretary made it clear that, if he was in that position, he would have expected to be told what was going on with the investigation. However, she made it very clear that she was not told what happened until after it had happened, and that she did not know the identity of the Member of Parliament concerned until after he had been arrested.

John Reid: I want to put the record straight on this point. My intervention was precisely as my right hon. Friend said—to criticise the systems and structures that had failed to alert the Home Secretary to a matter of such potentially explosive political consequence. I do not regard a Home Secretary being told that information as in any way intervening on the operational independence of the police; any former Home Secretary here will recognise that. The point that I am making is that it was not the Home Secretary who was at fault in those circumstances, but the structures and systems that failed to alert her.

Keith Vaz: Absolutely. The operational independence of the police is one of the fundamental principles of this debate. There should be no question of any politician, whoever they are, intervening in this process. Once there is intervention, frankly, the whole system becomes prejudicial. That is why it is important to underline to the Government and my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House—a great champion of civil liberties for more than 30 years, before she entered the House and since—that the Government have had nothing to do with this circumstance. It is vital for the Government to understand that. It was the permanent secretary, in his own way, who decided to initiate the inquiry because of the leaks. The matter was then passed to the police, and it was the police who decided to take appropriate action to deal with the situation. That is the first point that I want to make.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Keith Vaz: I will not give way.
	My second point relates to the action of the police. I do not know whether right hon. and hon. Members have seen the letter from Mr. Bob Quick to the Home Secretary, which has been put in the Library of the House. It is about the action that he took in respect of this matter. He seems to be relying on paragraph 5.2 of code B of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 in his assertion that what he did in going to the Serjeant at Arms and seeking to ensure that he was able to get her consent for the search of the property underlines and vindicates his position.
	There are serious questions to be asked about how the police dealt with that process. That has nothing to do with the substance of the case—if any—against the hon. Member for Ashford; it is to do with the process adopted by the Metropolitan police in order to enter the premises of the hon. Gentleman. Those questions need to be asked now; frankly, I do not believe that they can wait until after the proceedings have concluded. As other right hon. and hon. Members have made clear, the investigation may last much longer than is envisaged and the two principal actors may well be bailed again. There may be a prosecution, and therefore due process will take several months to complete.

Henry Bellingham: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Keith Vaz: I will not give way, because time is very short.
	To wait such a long time before Parliament has an opportunity to make a decision would, I think, be wrong. That is why I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendment tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife. I hope that the Leader of the House and other colleagues will reflect on the issue. It is possible for the Committee to meet and, of its own volition, to decide to sit in camera and to adjourn. If there are to be seven wise people, we assume that they will be wise enough to know what bits they do and do not want to put into the public domain. If we do not trust Members of the House to deal with those processes, there will be no one else whom we can trust in respect of these matters.
	There has been speculation in the press about whether the Home Affairs Committee is to hold an inquiry on these matters. These matters go far beyond its remit. There are distinguished members of the Select Committee from both sides of the House all around me; we will not have a chance to discuss these matters until tomorrow, which is when we will take a decision. However, before then it is important for the House to reflect on what is a very serious situation. If it is only a question of timing, that is a very small concession that the Government have to make, and then one leaves it to the good offices of those sitting on the Committee to make a decision.
	I have debated with the hon. Member for Ashford many times across the Floor of the House on matters to do with home affairs, and I have always found him to be a decent man and a person of great integrity. We, as Members of this House, are able to put up with the brickbats of public life and exposure in the media, as we all do many times, some more than others. My sympathy is with his family, especially his young daughter, in having faced what he and they faced that day, and with his members of staff. I know that members of my staff sometimes wish that somebody would come and take all their computers away because of the level of casework that we have. However, it must be a terrible experience for the hon. Gentleman's staff and constituents, because on those computers is routine casework. Some cases may well involve complaints against the press— [ Interruption ] I mean the police; perhaps that was wishful thinking—and therefore cannot be dealt with. The hon. Gentleman therefore has our sympathy.
	I hope that as a House we can come together on this matter. It should not be a partisan issue—it should be a question of the rights of Parliament, and I hope that the Leader of the House will bear that in mind when she replies to the debate.

Kenneth Clarke: I am one of those Members, together with the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), who put their name to the amendment tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell). I like to feel that there is a consensus growing for an approach on that basis that will give much more effect to Mr. Speaker's statement last week, allow for a quicker inquiry, and allow us to look straight away, in proper order, at some of the issues of principle rather than the details of continuing police investigations. I agree with the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) that this should be approached in a non-partisan way. I usually enjoy the party rancour in this place, and realise that it can often be a useful way of checking the Government, but on this occasion it is totally unsuitable. I hope, as I see discussions taking place on the Government Front Bench, that even at this late stage there might be some reconsideration.
	I ask Members to imagine what would happen if the two principal parties had been on the opposite sides of the House when this incident occurred and the Met police got it into their heads to start proceeding in this way. I regret to say—I will not name names—that some Back Benchers on my side of the House would make a speech like that of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) and dutifully rally round, saying, "This is a routine issue—what are we wasting our time for?" and defending his Front Benchers. I think that we would be hard-pressed to find many Labour Members, if they were sitting on the Opposition Benches, who were not beside themselves with rage if a shadow Home Office spokesman had been arrested in these circumstances and treated in this way.
	I do not want to personalise this, but I first met the Leader of the House when she was the legal adviser to the National Council for Civil Liberties. That is when I first had dealings with her, although she probably does not remember. She was a pretty feisty, radical lawyer in those days, and I have to tell her that she would not conceivably have made the speech then that she made an hour or two ago—she would have been leading demonstrations outside about the behaviour of the Government in confining matters in this way.
	I realise how annoying leaks are. They are not always heroic, although one can find the heroic examples of Churchill, Sandys, and so on. They cause great distrust, break up the teamwork in an office, and cause great annoyance to Ministers, as I know. In fact, most leaks come from other Ministers and their political advisers, or are authorised by them. The civil service always gets very indignant when leak inquiries are set up, because that is where they usually come from. I well remember the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) getting leaks about child benefit that he shared with me, as an Opposition spokesman, from time to time. I am sure that those leaks came from Barbara Castle, or with her authority. Similar examples have multiplied in this Government over the past 10 years.
	We addressed the whole matter because of the problems that we had over the criminal law when foolish decisions were made to prosecute Clive Ponting and Sarah Tisdall, who had been leaking material from the Ministry of Defence on security issues, and one of them was acquitted by a jury on the public interest defence. We decided that the Official Secrets Act and the panoply of the relevant law should relate only to national security. The law was changed precisely to avoid the outrage that occurred on this occasion. We cannot anticipate all the inquiries, but by now the police or the Government would have briefed us on any aspect of this matter that would support a stronger view being taken. No crime has been committed; it is a disciplinary offence inside the Department. Nobody is going to be prosecuted. If any prosecution is brought, it will fail because the public interest defence is absolutely self-evident. Indeed, there will be outrage in this House if a prosecution succeeds, and that should have been apparent from the word go.
	I do not know what the timing of the debate is, so I shall try to be brief. I do not think that anybody here is in favour of totalitarian government. The partisan stuff on both sides is quite absurd; no one on this side is running spies inside the Government and no one on the Government Front Bench is advocating a police state. At the moment, we have a House of Commons where everybody is in favour of parliamentary democracy, which I could not have said 20 years ago when the Militant Tendency had members in our midst. I think that we are pretty safe now.
	We are, however, in danger of being led by an increasing air of carelessness and indifference to basic rules. We all respect the rule of law, but sometimes we do not pay too much attention to it in some of the legislation that comes before the House. Anger, rage and unfavourable press comment always affect Ministers, but we now have an intolerance of dissent and an inability to take those brickbats that has led to a minor version of Henry II's expressions of rage about Thomas à Becket. In this case, it must have been, "Who will find and dispense with this turbulent priest for me?" At every stage, as somebody said earlier, people should have thought better. The permanent secretary should not have called the Cabinet Office in, and certainly should have stopped them talking to the police. In her statement, the Home Secretary said she agreed with the view of Sir David Normington that it was necessary to request police assistance. I am sure that she regrets that bitterly. She was already in trouble with leaks, but when she agreed to that, he got her into a lot more trouble.
	I am worried about the Met, given their behaviour in the so-called "cash for honours" case, and the case of the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain). When the police are called in they should not think, "Here's a good public interest case. We'll get a lot of good publicity out of this; it'll be a good high profile thing." They should have said to the Cabinet Office, "This is not a matter for us. Go away and sort it out inside the Department itself."
	When the matter came to this House, we were not prepared for it. Instead of letting the police in to search an office, somebody should have made inquiries. It has been revealed that there was no clear process enabling that to be done. Of course, if someone arrived and said that a Member was being investigated for a normal criminal offence, I would expect the Serjeant at Arms to give the police officer in question the keys, to send someone to escort him and his officers, and to arrange for them to be provided with tea and sandwiches while they carried out the necessary searches. What if they inquired and were told that there was no warrant, or if they had inquired and were told, "This is all about leaks from the Home Office"? We need to re-establish processes whereby in those circumstances the Serjeant at Arms, without hesitation, shows them to the door and gets them dispatched.
	What will happen if we duck everything today, and accept a Government motion plainly designed to kick this into the long grass? They believe that the best thing to do is to get the matter beyond Christmas, let the police spin it out a bit, and hope that it will all die away, as it did in the case of the right hon. Member for Neath. No one will hear any more about it because the fuss will have died down by the time a report comes out. We need an inquiry now. We need one that does not have an in-built Government majority, which is independent and which advises the House on how we deliver our scoundrels to justice while ensuring that our more diligent Members are protected when they carry out their work.

Tony Wright: I agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) on two things. The way in which this debate has become wholly partisan has done us all a huge disservice. It should not have mattered at all which party the Member of Parliament belonged to. The issue is more important than that.
	The second thing on which I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman is that the criminal law, as I understand it, should never have gone anywhere near the matter. Without going into the history, we thought that we had banished the criminal law from that area—indeed, I suspect that that is the conclusion that will be arrived at.
	However, if we say, "Let's not do the partisan thing; let's accept that we think that something on the face of it wholly disproportionate and wrong happened in this case," we also have to go a little further and accept that that does not mean, as some hon. Members in the past few days have thought, that the immunities granted to Members under the name of privilege are larger than they really are. Those immunities are not general; they are very precious, but also very defined. However, there is clearly a general misunderstanding about what they are, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) said. Whatever else comes out of this debate, we ought to try to be a bit clearer about what this thing called privilege is, which would be a good thing.
	On that point, my constituents have not been wholly persuaded over the years that self-regulation has quite met the case when Members of Parliament have done things that they thought should occasion the attention of the criminal law. When my constituents have seen Members of Parliament doing things that looked to them like improper conduct, fraud and embezzlement of public money, they have wanted something to happen. They have not been entirely persuaded that the word "privilege" means that nothing should happen to Members of Parliament, so I want us to be clear about what that privilege is.
	If we concede, rightly, some things, we should concede the other things, too. There has been much talk of the public interest in this case. However, I had to stop when I heard Mr. Galley's lawyer, who was also Lord Levy's lawyer and with whom I had some dealings at the time, talking about the public interest in respect of Mr. Galley, who had been systematically leaking information from the Home Office for political reasons. As someone who first tried to introduce whistleblower legislation in the House, which my friend the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) took up with the aid of the Government, and as someone who spent a good deal of time when we passed the Freedom of Information Act 2000 trying to ensure that there was a public interest reason for disclosing official information, even in areas where the Government did not want a public interest test to apply, I can confirm that in all those cases we were concerned about getting the balance right.
	As we are talking about public interest, I have to say that there is no public interest in having routine leaking for political reasons. That offends against two principles, one of which is the normal law of confidence. It also offends against the principle of civil service impartiality. We might even get round to passing a civil service Act this Session, after 150 years. If we do, we will enshrine in law the principle of civil service impartiality, which is what has been offended against in this instance, too. Offending against that principle has consequences that are detrimental to the public interest. That is why I am anxious about some of the things that have been said, because if we go down that route, Ministers, fearful that such leaking will occur, will collect around themselves political trusties, thus excluding the civil service from things in which it should be included. That will be extremely damaging to the public interest. There are a number of principles at work.

Martin Salter: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Dominic Grieve: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Tony Wright: No, I will not.
	Having said what I have about the case in question, I also think that when we consider issues of privilege, it is worth reflecting that if it was the case—and I know that it will not be in this instance—that a Member of Parliament had entered into an arrangement with a civil servant to disclose information on a continuing basis for political reasons or if a Member of Parliament was paying a civil servant to send information across regularly, we would regard that as extremely serious. It would also raise questions about Members' conduct. It might not occasion the criminal law, but it would lead us to define what we think is the proper conduct of a Member of Parliament. So yes, let us have a Committee: I rather like the Committee proposed by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) and I hope that the Government will be well disposed to such a Committee. I do not know whether the term "sub judice" actually covers the worry we have about police inquiries, but I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman can assure us that it does. Let us have the Committee; let the Committee decide where it is and where it is not proper for it to go; and let us put all that on the table in order to make some sense out of it all.

Iain Duncan Smith: I know that we are fast running out of time and I wish to cover just two main points. I agree with a number of right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken. I thought that the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) made a very thoughtful speech and I also agreed with the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), whose amendment I hope to support in the Lobby tonight. When it comes to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), I usually agree with him without having to think about it, but there is one area where I would disagree with him: if he is going to take this evidence in on rice paper, he will need to be more careful about which type of equipment the police will take in with them as they enter the House! I have to warn him there.  [Laughter.] Let me focus quickly on two main points. First, it is absurd for the Government to insist on two points in their motion: that we have to give way to the process of what the police are doing, which means the Committee cannot carry out its inquiry; and that there must be Government superiority on the Committee. This is a House of Commons matter; it is not for the Executive. If we watch the guides going past that rather contrived picture in the Lobby with Speaker Lenthall on his knees in front of King Charles, we all pride ourselves on the idea that that was the moment when we broke from the Executive, who lost control of this place. The truth is that, in many senses, tonight has proved that the King actually won, because here we have the Executive deliberately misreading what Mr. Speaker wanted and tabling a motion that, as I warned the other day, is a debasement of Mr. Speaker's own idea of what should happen. We do not need any superiority of the Executive on that Committee; what we need is seven or whatever number of the so-called wise men and women to sit on that Committee and deliberate. They do not need any push from the Government about which direction they should move in.
	My second main point is about timing. As I said in an intervention, we are having a police inquiry into what went on and what was wrong, but why are the police allowed to carry on when they still might proceed against my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green)? The police can decide what was right and wrong, but this House cannot. Is there one rule for the police and another for us? We have said that we are not above the law, but neither are the police. The absurdity is in the idea that we in the House have no courage, yet the Government have no courage that this place can behave sensibly or that the men and women on this Committee can take a decision about the effects of a prosecution or a lack of one for my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford.

Patrick Cormack: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, 10 years ago, the Government set up a Joint Committee of both Houses to deal with issues of privilege and have ignored it ever since? If the report it produced had been implemented, we would not be in the mess we are today.

Iain Duncan Smith: My hon. Friend is absolutely right.
	In addition, there has been an element of party political knockabout tonight, although some speeches have been very good. I simply put it to Government Members that irrespective of whether they agreed or disagreed with the previous Conservative Government, tonight's true debate is not about who was right or wrong; the true debate tonight is whether the Executive or Members of Parliament should decide in this place what this place really needs.
	We are discussing the serious issue of whether an MP has any form of protection in going about their natural duties. It may be that many are suspicious of what my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford was up to. It may be, as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) said, that what he did was too persistent and too political. I do not know. But I do know that we cannot have a Member of Parliament, of whatever political colour or hue, being investigated under a criminal charge by the police as though what that Member was doing was somehow damaging to national security. That is an absurdity. Members of Parliament must be free to go about their job. I ask Labour Back Benchers to think about whether they would behave as they are behaving tonight if they were in opposition. They have a chance tonight to tell the Government that they do not have a say in this matter. When the Executive wish to have their way, Members should always behave as if they were in opposition.

Denis MacShane: This has been an important debate, with constructive speeches from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) and the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke).
	In a sense, I would like to split the difference between the motion and the amendment. I must say to my dear right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House that the motion is poorly worded. The amendment makes it clear that the Committee can investigate all that happened inside the Ministry, and call to give evidence those who appear to have systemically organised a breach of confidence on a party political basis inside the Home Secretary's private office—not merely a civil servant seeing some document and being so outraged that he must put it in the public domain, but a continuing breach of confidence and act of disloyalty at the heart of our democratic government. My right hon. and learned Friend's motion does not allow such an investigation to take place.
	We have had too much partisanship in this matter. Last week, all we heard were criticisms of the Prime Minister and Home Secretary. This weekend, we have heard some unacceptable remarks about the Speaker. Some offices in our state—one thinks of the monarchy and senior judges—are in a sense fused with their occupants, and that may also be the case with the Speaker. If one makes an ad hominem attack on the Speaker, one attacks the Chair itself. The Conservative party must stop that now.
	I agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe that people should have said no much earlier. Sir David Normington should have said no, the Metropolitan police should have said no, and the House authorities should have said no. It is not sergeants who are required to fall on their sword but officers, and we should take some responsibility in that matter. We cannot put the matter off until the full police inquiry has taken place.
	The argument about the composition of the Committee—whether party political, regional or gender—is a red herring. I have confidence in the Speaker, under the terms of his statement, my right hon. and learned Friend's motion, and the amendment proposed by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), to choose seven colleagues who will carry out their activities independently, without fear or favour. To encourage that to happen, I have to say with regret, as a serial loyalist to my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House, that I cannot vote for the Government tonight, and I hope that the amendment carries the day.

David Heath: As a non-Privy Counsellor, it is a privilege to be able to participate, however briefly, in the debate. I support the amendment tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) and other Members from both sides of the Chamber. This matter is of great importance to many in the House, and must be addressed without pomposity and self-regard, because it is about our constituents, not our privileges. It is right—
	 Three hours having elapsed since the commencement of proceedings on the Business of the House motion, the Speaker put the Question s  necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded at that time  (Order, this day).
	 Amendment proposed: (e), leave out from 'action' to end and add
	'and to investigate all the circumstances, including Ministerial, official and police actions, which led to the search, and to review the applicable rules and procedures of the House and to make recommendations;
	That the Committee have the power to send for persons, papers and records; to report from time to time; to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House;
	That the Committee should be bound in its proceedings by the existing resolution of the House on matters of sub judice; and
	That the Committee consist of seven members appointed by the Speaker.'— (Sir Menzies Campbell.)

Question put, That the amendment be made:—
	 The House divided: Ayes 281, Noes 285.

Question accordingly negatived.

Patrick Cormack: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. This is a point of order for you, because the motion that the House has so narrowly approved was very different from what you suggested last Wednesday. Will you please reflect on that and come back to the House with another statement tomorrow?

Mr. Speaker: The House has not agreed to any motion; it was an amendment that was put forward.

Main Question put.
	 The House divided: Ayes 293, Noes 270.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Ordered,
	That, following the search of a Member's office in the Parliamentary Estate by the police and the seizure of material therein, a committee be appointed to review the internal processes of the House administration for granting permission for such action, and to make recommendations for the future;
	That the committee must not in any way prejudice any police inquiry or potential criminal proceedings and that therefore it will be adjourned immediately after choosing a chairman until the completion of any relevant inquiry or proceedings that may follow;
	That the committee have power to send for persons, papers and records; to report from time to time; to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House; and
	That the committee consist of seven members appointed by the Speaker reflecting the composition of the House.

Simon Hughes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In the light of the two votes that we have just had, I thought that it was a matter of courtesy to inform you of a point of order and then to ask your advice. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) and I do not feel that we can recommend to our colleagues that they serve on a Committee that will be a nonsense—a Committee that will sit to choose a Chairman and can then sit no more. I hope you will understand if we do not recommend participation in the process. Secondly, can you confirm that it is none the less possible for other Committees of the House, including the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, to take up this matter if they wish to do so?

Mr. Speaker: The House has made its decision and it is best for me not to comment on the issues that the hon. Gentleman has raised. He is aware of the rules of the House on the composition of Committees, and it is best that I do not make any comment on that matter.

Theresa May: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I feel it would also be courteous to the House and to you to inform you that my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) and I feel unable to recommend to Members of our party that they should serve on the Committee, which we believe so blatantly flies in the face of the desires that you had about the nature of the Committee, which were that it should not be party political and that it should meet and conduct its inquiries now. I, too, ask for confirmation that the subject will be open to other Committees of this House, such as the Standards and Privileges Committee, and that their remit covers the matters that your Committee would cover.

Mr. Speaker: I make no comment on the right hon. Lady's first point. On the latter point, it is up to Committees of the House to decide what they wish to do and what action they want to take. That is entirely up to them.

David Winnick: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Those of us—whatever our numbers—who remain very concerned about the police raid, as I mentioned in my point of order last week, remain so because we believe that what took place had no justification whatsoever. In view of the points of order that have just been made, and although I realise that you do not decide on statements and cannot possibly do so, would it not be appropriate for my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House to reconsider the circumstances of the matter and to make a statement to the House as soon as possible? I presume that you, Sir, made your statement last week on the basis of the seriousness of what occurred. We cannot just leave things as they are. It seems to me that the reputation and authority of the House are very much at stake.

Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the House has been able to access the protocol that I have set out. If similar circumstances emerge in future—God forbid—the protocol will be used. Every hon. Member, every Officer of the House and every Speaker will know exactly what to do with the protocol.

Bernard Jenkin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Does anything that has occurred in the House today affect your powers to refer complaints about breach of privilege to precedents and to a motion on the Floor of the House in the usual way?

Mr. Speaker: It is up to hon. Members to raise matters of privilege. It is not up to me.

George Young: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will know that the Standards and Privileges Committee can deal only with matters specifically referred to it by the House.

Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order—it is something that the House already knows.

Richard Younger-Ross: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Further to the question asked by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) about police access to the parliamentary server, I point out that many Members keep data on the server. I keep on it names and addresses, and details of issues about which people contact me. Can you advise us, Mr. Speaker, what assurance Members can give their constituents that if the police have accessed that server, details of all our constituents have not been given to them?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman will recall that in response to another Member I said I would look into that question. It is being looked into as a matter of urgency.

Debate on the Address
	 — 
	[3rd Day]

Debate resumed (Order, 4 December).
	 Question again proposed,
	That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
	Most Gracious Sovereign,
	We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.

Employment, Universities and Skills and Housing

John Denham: The worldwide credit crunch is hitting the economy and public finances in every country, and few families and businesses believe that they will be unaffected in any way. What families and businesses need is real help now. They want to know that investment is being made for the future to ensure that when the upturn comes the country will be stronger, more competitive and fairer.
	Last Wednesday's Queen's Speech showed how the Government are acting now to help families and businesses through the downturn and how we are planning for the future. All that is in sharp contrast to the Opposition, with their do-nothing attitude and their "let the recession take its course". The measures we set out last week support the action we are taking now and they will put the right structures in place to ensure success in the future.
	My Department has an important role to play in helping to create a fairer society and a more productive economy, through our support for research and innovation, for higher education and, crucially, for the skills that are vital to businesses in a downturn and in the future upturn. As was rightly said by the Time to Invest in Skills campaign, led by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, the CBI and other business leaders, companies that do not train are two and a half times more likely to fail than those that do. We are making it easier for businesses to get the skills they need, quickly.
	Over the next two years, small and medium-sized enterprises will be the focus of a £350 million increase in Train to Gain funding. By then the budget for Train to Gain will be more than £1 billion. We are relaxing Train to Gain rules to allow funding for bite-sized units for qualifications in subjects such as leadership, risk management and customer service—things we know that SMEs prefer and that are proven to bring quick benefits to business.
	We are relaxing the rules to allow the staff of small and medium-sized enterprises free training at level 2, whether or not they have reached that level. We are investing more in funding for training at level 3.

Tony Baldry: What small businesses want in the immediate term is access to credit and some of the assistance that the Chancellor announced in the pre-Budget report. Over the past few days, I and my office have been whirligigging around regional development agencies, banks and Business Links, trying to discover who actually has information about the Chancellor's announcements. The last response—today—was from London Business Link:
	"As discussed, I do not have any substantial information on the new funding scheme for SMEs and will send you any information I receive from our research team."
	Even though Business Link knew that the debate was taking place today, it could not tell Members how small businesses will be able to access the money announced by the Chancellor in the pre-Budget report.

John Denham: The new loan guarantee schemes and the support for export credits and for capital investment announced in the pre-Budget report will be made available, and Business Link is the right place to go for details, although it is not entirely surprising that schemes announced only a fortnight ago are not in every case yet in place. However, the Government's action in taking those measures is in stark contrast to the attitude of Opposition Members who have criticised everything we have done and take the view that nothing can be done to help small businesses get through. As the schemes are brought in, Business Link will be the right place to go for information.

Chris Ruane: The optical electronics research and innovation centre, OpTIC, is in my constituency, so I welcome my right hon. Friend's announcements about research and development and the export trades. What will be their impact in a Welsh constituency?

John Denham: A number of the functions of my Department, especially my responsibility for research budgets, are UK-wide and the investment we are maintaining in research is critical not just for England but for the whole country. Skills policy is a devolved responsibility so I cannot tell my hon. Friend that every single thing done in England will be mirrored, but we maintain close contact with all the devolved Administrations, including the Welsh Assembly. In those Administrations, people are looking at ways of meeting similar needs, so I urge him to raise the issue with the Assembly. I shall be happy to do so, too, if he feels that his constituency is not getting support that should be available.

Tobias Ellwood: May I go back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry)? The problem is that small and medium-sized businesses cannot get hold of the money and loans they need, because the £37 billion of taxpayers' money lent by the Government has been lent at an interest rate of about 12 per cent. That compares with only 5 per cent. in the United States or Germany. As long as the rate is 12 per cent., how can money possibly be handed down to the SMEs that are begging for money so that they can stay solvent?

John Denham: If the Opposition had had their way over the past year we would not be discussing a banking system that existed at all to lend to SMEs. On every significant issue that came up over the past year, the Conservatives got it wrong. We made sure that the right investment was made and that there were the right loan guarantees to stabilise the banking system and prevent collapse. As the hon. Gentleman knows well, we are engaged in discussion with the banks about the detail of their lending policies, but they have made clear the obligations they accept about marketing and the availability of finance for small business. We are putting in place the extra measures announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor two weeks ago. That is a powerful set of messages. However, the hon. Gentleman is right: small businesses are crucial in the economy, which is why we are going to such lengths to ensure that we tackle all the problems. As they arise, we shall continue to bear down on the banks and the guarantee systems—whatever is necessary to make sure we get through this recession. It is the hallmark of the Government that we understand our responsibility not to walk away from families and businesses in hard times, but to tackle difficult issues and to keep coming back to issues that are not easy to solve at first sight. That is in stark contrast to what would have happened if the Opposition had been in power.
	I was talking about the extra investment for SMEs that we will make through training. We can do that only because the Government have planned to invest in skills, unlike the Opposition, who have promised to cut— [ Interruption. ] Hon. Members should listen, because this will affect many of their constituents. The Conservatives have promised to cut Train to Gain spending by more than £1 billion. They have promised to deny 1 million employees the chance to obtain new skills, and to get on, every year. That is a big difference. We are planning to invest in skills. The Opposition are planning to cut investment in skills.

David Anderson: May I give some advice to Opposition Members who say that regional development agencies are not helping them? In the north-east, we were advised last week by One North East that a transition loan fund is being set up, as well as a small business finance scheme and a capital loan fund. Opposition Members might consider ringing 0845 600 9006 and talking to One North East—they might get the advice they obviously need for their people.

John Denham: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has clearly talked to his local regional development agency and so knows what immediate steps are being taken. The same is often the case with other regional development agencies. His RDA is providing some interim support before the national schemes are fully available across the country.

Adrian Bailey: To counter some of the doom and gloom emanating from the Opposition Benches, may I inform my right hon. Friend of a company that I visited in Tipton a couple of weeks ago, called Carrs Tool Steels? It has just invested in a new milling machine, with the aid of a grant from Advantage West Midlands—the RDA—and the backing of a local bank. That machine will increase its productivity twelvefold; it is the only such machine in the country. It will have a remarkable impact on the company's future prospects. I ask him to make sure that such funding from regional development agencies, and the work that RDAs do with local financial institutions, is maintained. The situation is a contrast to what would happen if some of the policies promoted by the Opposition were put in place.

John Denham: My hon. Friend is right to raise that example, and to pay tribute to the work that has been done by successful entrepreneurs and regional development agencies. The co-operation between the two has resulted in the development and growth of many successful companies. I agree with him that although times are challenging, the way in which the Conservative party always seeks to run the country down is a challenge in itself, to say the least.

Phil Willis: Will the Secretary of State give way?

John Denham: I would like to make a little progress, but I will take an intervention from the Chairman of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee.

Phil Willis: I am grateful to the Secretary of State. I want to ask him a positive question, to which I hope he will give a positive answer. Last Monday—a week ago today—a number of right hon. and hon. Members visited the Honda Formula 1 team.  [Interruption.] No, it was not my fault. We are talking about an innovative company with cutting-edge technologies that drives forward new products at a level that is probably not seen anywhere outside that very exciting area. What will the Secretary of State offer companies such as the Honda Formula 1 operation, through the Queen's Speech, so that we retain those businesses, skills, and innovative practices in the UK?

John Denham: The important thing is that we maintain our investment in science and research, continue to develop organisations such as the Technology Strategy Board, and continue to recognise those parts of the economy in which we have a particular strategic strength and advantage. That means working with those areas of the economy, whether through investment in innovation and research, or through the development of skills.
	So far as Formula 1 is concerned, it is well recognised that there is a triangle of particular expertise in this country, which goes beyond any one particular race team. It has specialist companies within it, and it has links to wider manufacturers. The hon. Gentleman asked me to look at what is happening in the Formula 1 industry, and I am more than happy to do so, but I am quite clear that our commitment to investment in research and innovation lies at the heart of creating the conditions in which such activity can continue.
	Train to Gain is not the only issue on which the Government have listened to business. As everyone will have heard, business said that it found the skills landscape too complex, so we are implementing the simplification proposals of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. We are merging the Train to Gain brokerage service with Business Link. Employers asked us to cut bureaucracy in apprenticeships, and we did. They asked us to ensure that high-quality employer training could be accredited, and we did.
	We know that as we respond to the downturn, we need to make further changes. We have already announced additional funding from the European social fund to support skills advice and training for those who lose their jobs, or fear that they may do so. I want to ensure that more of the £5 billion annual investment in further education and skills helps people to get back into work. I want more people to get support before redundancies occur or short-term contracts come to an end.
	Where a business moves on to short-time working, there will be more scope to offer free, short-term and intensive training for employees. I would urge any company, large or small, that is considering short-time working to follow the example of Nissan and JCB, and to talk to their local further education college or the Learning and Skills Council about what training they can offer their staff during that down-time. When redundancies or the shedding of contract labour is pre-announced, colleges and training providers need more flexibility to provide training support before jobs are lost.
	The changes underline why further change to the organisation of the skills system is needed as we move towards greater responsiveness to employers, greater flexibility in the skills system and greater flexibility for providers. Under the Conservative party, post-16 education and training was a disaster. The Conservatives rightly gave colleges independent incorporated status, but then denied them funding and support. By 1997, in the confusion created by the training and enterprise councils, FE spending had been cut in real terms in the previous four years. There was no capital budget. The National Audit Office said that some FE buildings were not fit for purpose, and only half the people who started a course completed it.
	The establishment of the Learning and Skills Council enabled the Labour Government to transform the scene. Completion rates are now 80 per cent., and that work is concentrated on the most useful qualifications. Investment in skills has risen by 50 per cent., and we are halfway through a £4.3 billion capital programme. The success of the LSC means that we can change to meet changing challenges. In 16-to-19 education, the challenges are securing proper, coherent planning of the curriculum; raising the participation age, which the Conservative party opposes; and taking clear responsibility to further reduce the number of those not in education, employment or training.

Edward Garnier: Will the Secretary of State please comment on the Government's performance in relation to education in prisons? I know that that is partly his remit, and partly that of the Secretary of State for Justice. There are large gaps in the provision of education within secure training centres, young offender institutions and the adult prison estate. I am afraid that the position is not getting any better as a result of the reforms that the Government are engineering this autumn and winter.

John Denham: The hon. and learned Gentleman raises an important point. The Public Accounts Committee reported on the issue recently, but with respect, it did not say that things were getting no better; it recognised the £151 million of investment in offender learning and some significant achievements. However, there is no doubt that there are further improvements still to be made, particularly when it comes to ensuring continuity of training for prisoners who move around within the prison estate. The Government deserve credit for the investment that we have made. It was a good move to shift responsibility to professional educators and away from the Prison Service. The remaining issues have been properly identified, and we need to work to tackle them. However, progress has been made on that important issue.
	On adult skills, we need a slimmer, more flexible, more responsive system; the new skills funding agency will provide that. Through the children, skills and learning Bill, we will legislate to create the new SFA, to deliver better help, and to deliver a system that will better build the right skills for the future. The SFA will be designed to be flexible, and highly responsive to employer needs and the changing economic demands of the country. Central to the new system will be the way in which funding will follow the choices of learners much more closely. The SFA will focus on results rather than processes, allowing colleges and providers to be more innovative and entrepreneurial.
	The SFA will have responsibility for funding Train to Gain and for ensuring that providers are properly accredited. It will house the new national apprenticeships service as well as the adult advancement and careers service, which will offer further support and information for employers and for people who want to get on in their lives.

Joan Ryan: I want to catch my right hon. Friend while he is on the subject of apprenticeships. What the Government have done to support, build and grow the number of apprenticeships is fantastic. It makes a huge difference in all our constituencies, and to the young people concerned; I am sure that we all meet them when we hand them their certificates. I welcome giving suitably qualified young people a legal right to an apprenticeship, but there is a lot to do to ensure that they get the appropriate information, advice and guidance while at school. I seek my right hon. Friend's reassurance that, when we take those welcome measures forward in the Bill, we will make sure that advice and guidance are given at an early stage.

John Denham: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The issue of information, advice and guidance is actively being discussed by my Department and the Department for Children, Schools and Families. As a London MP, she will know that we have a London apprenticeship taskforce, which looks to increase the number of apprenticeship places in the capital; for historical reasons, the number there is significantly below the average in the rest of the country.

Several hon. Members: rose —

John Denham: If I may, I shall make a little more progress.
	The Opposition have not learned anything from their time in office. Recently, at the Association of Colleges conference, the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) was asked about the capital programme for further education colleges, and he said that
	"given the economic circumstances, we cannot commit ourselves to public spending plans in total for 2010 and beyond".
	The Government are bringing forward the FE college building programme to boost the economy, but the Opposition plan to cut it.

Rob Marris: On apprenticeships, because of the downturn, some employers unfortunately may provide less training. Apprenticeship placements are difficult to obtain, so will my right hon. Friend look at providing expanded apprenticeships in the public sector, particularly the NHS and local authorities, similar to those that we used to have under the National Coal Board, for example, which would take on excess apprentices, knowing that some of them would leak out to the private sector on the completion of their training. However, that did not matter, because it was a nationalised industry, and it was simply a different way of providing apprenticeship training for young people. We need to look at doing more of that with the NHS and local authorities.

John Denham: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend, and I will return to that point in a few moments.

Bob Spink: I apologise for being late for the debate, as I was attending a meeting. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that the education maintenance allowance goes to those young people who need it, to encourage them to take advantage of the greater participation that the Government have made available?

John Denham: That is an important point. The hon. Gentleman will know that we have had to change the contractor supplying that service, and it is working hard to clear up the backlog and ensure that those young people receive their EMA. The allowance has been a considerable success in encouraging young people to stay in further education and training. Again, in contrast to the Opposition, we are committed to that. I am sorry, this is becoming a little routine, but people who say that there is nothing to choose between the two parties need to pay slightly more attention to the differences between us in the areas that we are debating. I was about to move on to higher education, in which we have made a significant investment. The Opposition, however, have tended to indicate that they want to return to the unfunded expansion of higher education. I remind the House of what Lord Patten recently told  The Guardian about higher education policy when his party was in power. He said that
	"we expanded higher education hugely by reducing the investment in each student. The Treasury calls that higher productivity—it's a euphemism for poorer pay, degraded facilities, less money to support the teaching of each student".
	We have been warned.

Paul Truswell: May I just rewind my right hon. Friend's comments? Is he aware of many people's concern that the targeting of FE funding militates against the provision of return-to-learning courses which are crucial, for example, to women who have spent time outside the work force? What will the Queen's Speech proposals do to provide that stepping stone before those groups can take more formal qualifications, particularly in the light of the economic situation?

John Denham: The development of the skills funding agency will give us a more flexible vehicle for delivering policies that we have already announced. Earlier in the autumn, in setting out the priorities for skills funding, I was able to say that we wanted greater flexibility for colleges to deliver courses below level 2. We will introduce further flexibilities in Train to Gain for those with older qualifications that need to be refreshed. While the Queen's Speech is essentially about structure, we are moving the skills funding system towards greater flexibility, which brings greater professional autonomy to college managers. That is a process that will develop over time, but I am sure that it will help to tackle the important problem that my hon. Friend identified and which we need to address.
	Our investment in higher education is not only a sound investment for the future but it enables universities and higher education institutions to offer immediate and practical help to businesses and individuals in the downturn. I commend to the House the document produced last week by Universities UK, GuildHE and the Higher Education Funding Council. It gave a business contact for every single higher education institution, and it set out the practical support available from our universities.
	The ProfitNet programme introduced by the university of Brighton brings together 500 companies across Sussex, and it has helped create supply chains, new processes and joint ventures. The business evolution service provided by the university of Staffordshire supports skills development and training at different levels, depending on employer requirements. Changes to the rate of VAT mean that universities, like other registered charities, will benefit financially for the 13 months in which the lower rate remains in force. Both Brighton and Staffordshire universities have said that the VAT cut will help them to step up their efforts on behalf of their local communities, and I very much welcome that.

David Willetts: As the Secretary of State knows, I gave him advance notice that in our debate on universities I hoped that he would take the opportunity to tell the House authoritatively how many students in 2009-10 will have a lower maintenance grant entitlement than in the current year, 2008-09. We have been trying for weeks to get that elementary fact out of the Secretary of State, so will he take the opportunity to give the House that figure?

John Denham: The figures that count are as follows. Compared with the announcements that I made in July 2007, we will invest a further £100 million in student financial support. Two thirds of students will get a full or partial grant. The percentage of students getting a full grant will not be the third of students that I anticipated, but 40 per cent. All students will receive more grant than they would have done in 2007 up to the threshold of £50,000 a year of household income and, in the same range, all will receive more total support than they would have had in 2007. That is a demonstration of our commitment to improve the student finance system. It is quite true that we have had to make adjustments and that some people who would have received some grant will not do so in the next year, but we have been straightforward in our commitment to deliver two thirds of students receiving a full or partial grant, which we believe we will achieve next year.
	Whether people lack basic skills, or have high level skills which need to be refreshed, everyone from time to time needs to improve and update their skills and education. That is why we will bring in a new right for those in employment to request time to train—a new right for about 25 million people across Great Britain—and I am pleased that the devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales have indicated support for similar measures. That new right will encourage a discussion between individual employers about skills development. A key requirement is that training should help improve business performance and productivity in the organisation concerned.

Ian Gibson: Before my right hon. Friend moves on, it would be characteristic of him to remember that international students come to these islands, and that our educational institutions are a magnet for them. They go back home, and take the message with them, which is a very important way of developing relationships with developing countries and so on. They come here because of the quality of education, which is superb.

John Denham: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The overseas students who come to study here are not only welcome but are an important part of our education system. They enrich the institutions to which they come to study. It is fundamentally the investment that we have made as a Government in higher education that enables that to be true, and we need to maintain our commitment to proper investment in higher education and not repeat the mistakes that were made in the not-too-distant past but which too many people appear to have forgotten.
	Most businesses regard investment in training as investment in their own productivity. Employers spend £38 billion a year on training, which is many times more than the Government themselves spend, so time to train goes with the grain of what good businesses already do. I believe that asking for time to train will often become part of an employee's annual review process, and it will help to instil a culture of learning in every workplace. Apprenticeships, too, are an important way of unlocking talent and building skills in the work force. Ten years ago, apprenticeships were close to collapse. Only 75,000 people started them, and most of them did not finish. We as a Government have rescued apprenticeships. Last year, about 180,000 people started apprenticeships, and we are on target for 130,000 completions a year by 2010-11. Apprenticeships are back. Expanding the number of apprenticeships will help the economy to emerge from the recession stronger.
	The children, skills and learning Bill will give all suitably qualified young people a legal right to an apprenticeship from 2013, and it underlines our commitment to entitle young people who have the ability and desire to take an apprenticeship to do so. The Bill will strengthen apprenticeships by establishing a coherent legal framework that will define the programme and set the standard. We believe that fulfilling our apprenticeship commitments will lead to around one in five young people starting an apprenticeship, with further growth for older workers, too. To support this entitlement, we will, through the Bill, establish a new national apprenticeship service, which was called for a couple of years ago by the Lords Select Committee. For the first time ever, we will have a dedicated service for apprenticeships.
	Investment in apprenticeships will rise to more than £1 billion next year, but we need to take further measures. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) said earlier, we need a big drive to increase the number of apprenticeships offered in the public sector. We have already set targets for central Whitehall Departments. Radical new models of supporting apprenticeships, such as the London Apprenticeship Company, a community partnership including the City of Westminster college and Westminster Kingsway college, are being considered. That partnership intends to recruit apprentices who will be made available as a flexible work force to employers and other host companies. We have also set up a matching service for construction apprentices whose employers cannot keep them on, to place them in new employment and training. We are looking at developing a similar service in other sectors.
	The Government need to use the leverage of public procurement. When we use taxpayers' money to build a new college, school or hospital, we do not want just to create new buildings. We want to help build the skills base of the construction industry. Following the announcement in the pre-Budget report, whenever Departments and their agencies let new construction contracts, they are now encouraged to consider making it a requirement that the successful contractors have apprentices as a proportion of the project work force. All successful contractors in Building Colleges for the Future, worth £2.3 billion, are now required to have a formal training plan for the project work force and provide access to apprenticeship places. We will build on this approach in other sectors, hopefully including IT, where Government will spend nearly £14 billion this year.
	The Department for Communities and Local Government is also taking action on construction. The Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill will strengthen local democracy, promote regional and local economic development, and ensure fairness in construction contracts. It will improve current legislation on commercial contracts to provide a fairer system, and more cash flow for construction companies. The legislation will be especially important for small and medium-sized enterprises, which play a key role in local economies. The Bill will transfer greater power and responsibility to regions, local authorities and citizens in times of economic hardship. It is important that decisions can be taken by those who are closest to the issues, and the Bill contains important measures to encourage a more diverse range of people to take up civic positions, strengthening local democracy. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), will address many of those topics in more detail when he winds up the debate.
	As I said at the outset, the Government are determined to do whatever is necessary to support families and businesses through the downturn, and to ensure that we invest properly and wisely now for the upturn so that this country comes through stronger, fairer and more competitive—

John Howell: I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. It is very generous of him. Will he answer the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) earlier? How many students will be worse off as a result of changes to maintenance grants? We would like to know that before he finishes.

John Denham: The hon. Gentleman knows, if he has been listening, that we will invest £100 million a year more than we planned when we announced changes in 2007. Also, significantly more students—we think 40 per cent. rather than 33 per cent. of students—will get the full grant, and all students will receive more grant, up to £50,000 a year household income, than they would have received in 2007. The Opposition should recognise the significant improvement that has taken place in the grants system, compared with that which existed just a few years ago.
	I know that others wish to speak in the debate—

Tobias Ellwood: And will ask the same question again.

John Denham: It is not for me as Secretary of State in any way to seek to determine the questions that Opposition Members ask. That may or may not be the case.
	The measures that the Government announced in the legislative programme in the Queen's Speech and the measures that they support are in stark contrast with the message that we have had so often in the past few weeks that nothing can be done to help families and businesses at the time that they need Government most.

David Willetts: Members in all parts of the House who have an interest in skills and training and housing have had an unusual number of changes to the timing of the debate. We all understood the passions of the House on the very different matter that we have just debated. The present debate was originally planned for Thursday, and we are at last having it now, until 11 pm. One of the compensations of holding the debate today is that my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) was not able to join us on the Front Bench on Thursday. He had a commitment to take part in the Moulton village pantomime in his constituency, "Flinderella", in the starring role of Baron of Boston. We are grateful that he is able to join us after his theatrical triumph last week.
	Contrary to the extraordinary straw man so savagely attacked time after time by the Secretary of State, the Opposition fully understand the scale of the crisis facing our country as the economy heads into recession, and we fully understand the need for serious measures to tackle the crisis. The first thing to do is recognise what is going wrong with skills and training in our country. The Secretary of State was far too complacent about that. He spoke, as he so often does, of the extraordinary success in the number of apprenticeships, but the number at level 3—which is what apprenticeships are in many advanced western countries, not level 2; advanced apprenticeships, as they are now called—has been falling in each of the past seven years. The number has fallen from 112,00 to 110,000 to 105,000 and in 2006-07 it was down to 97,000. The Secretary of State failed to engage with the problem that there is a decline in the number of level 3 apprenticeships, compensated for only by an increase in the number of level 2 apprenticeships, which would not even have been called apprenticeships in the past.

John Denham: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that what really matters is the number of people who complete their apprenticeship, and does he accept that the number of people completing a level 3 apprenticeship has at least doubled?

David Willetts: We are talking about the Government's figures for the number of advanced apprentices in training, and that number is going down. The Secretary of State has renamed what in the past were youth training schemes and the youth opportunities programme. They are now called apprenticeships instead, so that he can claim a higher figure. We are entitled to draw attention to the problem with level 3 apprenticeships.
	There is also an increase in the number of young people not in education, employment or training. After 10 years of economic growth and billions of pounds spent on the new deal, the number is up by 132,000 compared with five years ago. So we have a decline in the number of advanced apprenticeships, an increase in the number of young NEETs, and for older learners in the past few years we have had a loss of no fewer than 1.4 million adult learning places. Mature workers losing their jobs and perhaps thinking of retraining and taking up a new career need to be able to access those adult learning places.
	We have a crisis in our training provision that matches the growing crisis in our economy. Instead of addressing that, the Secretary of State painted a caricature picture of what the Opposition stand for. As for the proposals in the programme put before the House in the Gracious Speech, most of the proposals in the children, skills and learning Bill are simple reorganisation, or to be more accurate, re-disorganisation—yet more change in a skills system that has already seen an enormous amount of change in the past 10 years.
	It is worth recording that the Secretary of State praised the achievement of the Learning and Skills Council, which the Government created in 2001, and which they are to abolish. Having created it in 2001 with 47 local learning and skills council branches, they reorganised it in 2003 at a cost of £53 million. In 2005 they reorganised it again at a cost of £35 million. In 2007 they passed the Further Education and Training Act 2007, which formally replaced the 47 local branches with nine regional centres, and now another year on, there is to be legislation abolishing the LSC entirely and replacing it with three other quangos. This is endless reorganisation in the absence of a real strategy for improving the level of skills in our country.
	If the Secretary of State will not take it from the Conservatives, he might accept it from someone for whom I suspect both he and I have considerable respect—Chris Humphries, the chief executive of the Commission for Employment and Skills, who produced a report that the Secretary of State himself cited. Chris Humphries said:
	"I don't think there is an employer in the land who understands what the new systems are".
	When asked by the Financial Times how many skills bodies there were in Britain, Mr. Humphries, one of our leading experts on skills, said:
	"Honestly, I haven't got the foggiest idea",
	but he estimated that there were "many hundreds". Instead of a skills policy, the Government have created an extraordinarily complicated structure that they expect employers and individual learners to navigate in order to access the training that they need, especially in tough times. What we desperately need is simplification; instead, the LSC is being replaced by a multiplicity of other bodies—a skills funding agency, a national apprenticeship service and a young people's learning agency—and there is a new role for local authorities.
	The Secretary of State praised incorporation—the new freedoms that we gave to further education colleges in 1992—and I was pleased to hear him do that. I sat on the new corporate body of Havant college for six years and I know how much FE colleges appreciated the new freedoms that we gave them. However, his changes will take away those freedoms by once more putting FE colleges under the control of local authorities, which is not what they want and is not in their interests. What we therefore have from the Secretary of State is a reversal of the changes that he himself praised in his own speech.
	What we believe in doing—our approach—is having more training and investment in skills by enabling FE colleges once more to serve their local communities and their local employers as genuine community colleges that are responsive to local employers and stakeholders. That is the right approach, and we believe in a simple funding structure with a body such as the further education funding council allocating funding: a single body allocating funding to FE colleges, not the multiplicity of different local authorities that they will have to deal with—and that is simply for the money going to 16 to 18-year-olds.
	When the Secretary of State produced his White Paper earlier this year, he estimated that some FE colleges could be taking students from an area covering 100 different local authorities. That remark was made in his own document. How on earth are they supposed to access funding from so many different agencies? It is going to be a bureaucratic nightmare, and once again it will fall to the Conservatives to sweep away the complexity and bureaucracy and give FE colleges the straightforward, simple funding arrangements that they wish for.  [ Interruption. ] The Secretary of State seems to doubt what I said about 100 local authorities; let me find what he said in his own document, "Raising Expectations". He said:
	"Colleges in particular can draw from a very wide area—sometimes from over 100 local authorities."
	If so, that is why the new funding arrangements will be such a nightmare for them.
	I believe that the only reason why the Government are embarking on all this reorganisation is that they accept privately that the Learning and Skills Council and the endless reorganisations have not worked and that their system has failed to deliver. The same is true of their proposals for "time to train", which reflect the failure of Train to Gain. The latter was supposed to achieve results by rewards and incentives and has failed to do so. The Ofsted report, "The impact of Train to Gain on skills in employment", was, it must be said, one of the most critical reports that it has produced on any aspect of our education system. It said of Train to Gain, on which the Government are supposed to be spending more than £1 billion, that
	"the survey found little evidence that the programme was driving up the demand for training among employers."
	It was clearly failing.
	The Ofsted report says the following about the job brokerage service, on which so much of the budget goes:
	"On the evidence of the provision surveyed, the brokerage service had a minimal impact on the number of employees starting a Train to Gain programme, or on the number of genuinely 'hard to reach' employers that were participating."
	This is Ofsted telling us that Train to Gain has not been working. As a result, there is a serious underspend on Train to Gain. We are proposing not to abolish it but to refocus its budget on what we believe is a priority, especially in these tough times: more funding for apprenticeships, which is the single best thing that we can do to strengthen the skills and training opportunities in our country.
	Train to Gain is failing and instead we will have "time to train". We do not oppose the idea of a right for employees to seek the opportunity for more training and we hope that it will succeed, but the Secretary of State must surely accept that concerns are expressed in the documents that his own Department has produced to go alongside the Bill.

Tobias Ellwood: Another fact that the Secretary of State conveniently left out is that the apprenticeship schemes are paid for in full for 16 to 18-year-olds, but as soon as someone reaches 19, the money is split in half, thereby dissuading a lot of people from continuing apprenticeships over the age of 18.

David Willetts: My hon. Friend is right and, contrary to the caricature painted by the Secretary of State, one of our many proposals is to refocus Train to Gain on supporting apprenticeships by ensuring that that completely unacceptable age discrimination is abolished. No longer will people get full funding for an apprenticeship only if they are under 19 and receive 50 per cent. funding after that. We believe—especially in tough times, when there will be people over 19 who, sadly, will lose their jobs, seek a new career or try to get training—that using the Train to Gain budget to support them in their apprenticeship is the single best thing that we could be doing. It is a great pity that the Secretary of State presides over a system that is so clearly biased against anyone over the age 19.
	We hope that the proposals for "time to train" will work, but the Secretary of State will doubtless be aware of the comments of the CBI, for example, which is concerned that the impact of "time to train" on employers
	"would have to be carefully monitored given the large number of employees who will be eligible to submit requests."
	It would be very useful to hear from the Secretary of State about something that he did not cover in his speech: the steps that he will be taking to ensure that employers are not overburdened as a result of the new right that he is proposing to implement. Surely, as a minimum, he needs to make a commitment to this House that he will monitor the effectiveness of this new right, to ensure that it is not coming with a disproportionate burden for employers.
	On apprenticeships, we also need to be confident that we can do far better than the Government have done. Their approach in the Queen's Speech has been not to do anything real to encourage apprenticeships, but instead to pass new legal rights. Again, we do not have a problem with people having a legal right to an apprenticeship, but legal rights is not the crucial issue—any more than passing legislation with a commitment to abolishing child poverty by 2020 will, of itself, miraculously solve the problems of poverty. In fact, there seems to be a pattern in this Queen's Speech, whereby the Government pass law requiring virtue and forbidding vice in all the areas where they seem to be making least progress in the real world in achieving their objectives. A report today shows how badly the Government are doing on child poverty, and we are invited to support the aim of abolishing it by 2020. We have clear evidence that they are doing badly on apprenticeships, and we are invited to support a new legal right for an apprenticeship, without any clear evidence of how it is to be achieved.
	This seems extremely odd, and I should be grateful if the Secretary of State helped us on this issue. In the draft Apprenticeships Bill—of course, we have yet to see the new combined legislation—there was a proposal that, in order to be an apprentice, one had genuinely to be employed. We Conservatives had been pressing for that, because we think that for most people, an apprenticeship means that they are in employment and receiving training in addition. A lot of damage is done to the brand if large numbers of other training schemes that are not linked to employment in any way can be called apprenticeships. The proposal in the Bill was that any apprenticeship had to be linked to employment. However, we understand that in addition the new legislation will include an entitlement for every young person to have an apprenticeship. If to be in an apprenticeship a person has to be in employment, and if we are passing a law giving everyone an entitlement to an apprenticeship, we will be interested to hear how the Secretary of State believes that the entitlement will be delivered. Ultimately, we are in a free economy in which employers cannot be required by law to take on an apprentice—although, of course, we want many more employers to do so.

Rob Marris: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Willetts: Yes. If in the absence of an intervention from the Secretary of State the hon. Gentleman will help with my inquiry, I will be grateful.

Rob Marris: I can help the hon. Gentleman with the inquiry, with reference to what the Secretary of State set out in his speech. There are two ways in which the entitlement can be delivered. One is through the public sector and the other is through contract compliance.

David Willetts: I am pleased with what the hon. Gentleman has said about the public sector. As he will be aware, in the past year I have tabled many questions trying to identify how many apprenticeships there are across the public sector and in central Government. The figure for the Government was shockingly low: there are 3,431 apprenticeships in central Government—a very tiny figure, especially if we take seriously the extraordinary figures for the total number of apprenticeships that we heard from the Secretary of State earlier. There seem to be 2,581 advanced apprenticeships, which are the only sort of apprenticeship in most other countries. Given that currently there are only around 3,000 apprenticeships across Government, it would be an extraordinary ambition for the public sector to deliver that entitlement, which will apparently be offered to all young people.
	I admire the ambition of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), and I hope that we will hear from the Government—we have not this evening; we are still waiting—about what practical measures they will take to achieve the targets. How will they explain the idea that people can have an entitlement to be employed?

John Denham: I shall not repeat the various measures that I set out in my speech. The House will note that the Conservative party has opposed them—particularly the establishment of a dedicated apprenticeship service, which has been recommended as the key necessary organisational focus by a Committee in another place. However, I am perfectly happy to confirm that our view is that an apprenticeship must have a clear link with employment in the workplace. We said that in the apprenticeships review last year, and our intention is that the Bill will define that key characteristic of the apprenticeship.
	We accept the challenge involved in meeting the obligation that the young people with the ability, qualification and desire for an apprenticeship should be able to have one. The difference between the Government and the Conservative party is that we believe that it is right to go for such challenges—to set ourselves the target and have the determination to achieve it. We heard again from the hon. Gentleman the voice of despair—"Nothing can be done."

David Willetts: The Secretary of State should understand that we are talking about genuine concerns raised by people in many areas of the British economy about how apprenticeship schemes are developing. I shall quote the House of Lords Committee, which he cited earlier:
	"Apprenticeship schemes have suffered from too much emphasis on quantity over quality. Completion rates for advanced apprenticeships remain unacceptably low. Progression through the different levels of apprenticeship and on to higher education also needs to be greatly improved."
	We want to do better; that is why we have said that we will cut the bureaucratic burdens on employers that currently deter them from taking on apprenticeships. We have said that we will encourage small businesses in particular to take on more apprentices by having more group training associations. We have said that apprenticeships should be a route into higher education and university for young people, who should benefit from them. That is why we have proposed both apprenticeship scholarships—to enable apprentices to go on to university—and the ending of age discrimination in access to apprenticeships.
	We want more real apprenticeships. We do not believe that the Secretary of State has credibly explained how the two requirements to be imposed by the legislation—that apprentices have to be employed and that people have a legal right to be an apprentice—can be reconciled in the real world. He has still not explained that puzzle to us.

Kelvin Hopkins: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Willetts: I will happily do so.

Kelvin Hopkins: The backbone of apprenticeship provision in the past was the large-scale public sector organisations and large-scale manufacturing industry; as a Government, the hon. Gentleman's party did more than any Government in history to destroy both. Does he not agree that starting to re-establish direct, large-scale employment in the public sector would help provide apprenticeships?

David Willetts: I absolutely wish to see more apprenticeships across the public sector. One of the reasons why I tabled the parliamentary questions that showed how few apprenticeships there were across central Government was to try to get the Government to do something about the scandal of how low that level is.
	Let me repeat again for the benefit of the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) that we want more people of all ages to be in apprenticeships. We have practical proposals to increase the number of people in apprenticeships; what we have from the Secretary of State is rhetoric without any explanation of how he will achieve the ambitious targets and legal requirements that he proposes. That is the history of his party's approach to apprenticeships—an endless stream of ambitious targets, none of which is ever met. They are not met because the Government have not made the practical proposals that we have made to ensure that they are spread. That is the problem that the Secretary of State's proposals face.
	I turn briefly to the subject of universities, about which the Secretary of State spoke. The Government have failed to achieve their apprenticeship targets, the Learning and Skills Council has failed and Train to Gain has failed. On top of all that, this is the last Session before the Government face the truth of their failure to achieve their target for university participation, which, we should recall, was that 50 per cent. of young people should participate in university education by 2010.

Bob Spink: Is the Opposition's policy on universities to continue investment and support in large-scale, longer-term research projects such as the large hadron collider, particle physics research and, of course, cutting-edge medical research?

David Willetts: It is. Like the Secretary of State, I had the excitement of being at the event in central London on the morning when the large hadron collider was turned on. I much regret the fact that, shortly after, it was turned off; we hope that it will eventually be turned on again. The reasons for the malfunctioning of the large hadron collider merit a debate in their own right. I was concerned when one of the scientists at the opening of the collider said that one problem had been that one of the people constructing it appeared to have left a can of lager in the central tube, and that that had distorted the signal. Whatever the reason, we believe in those projects, which are an important part of the scientific research carried out in our nation. That is why the former Prime Minister, Baroness Thatcher, was so right to take the decision that we should back that programme.
	I turn back to the subject of universities. The Government target was that 50 per cent. of young people should go to university by 2010. Progress towards achieving that target has barely moved upwards since it was set; the figure has been stuck at about 40 per cent. for the past seven years, and between 2005 and 2006 it actually fell. That is another example of the phenomenon of the Government announcing an ambitious target and failing to meet it. I suppose that we should be relieved that at least they did not propose a law that said that everybody should have an absolute entitlement to go to university, even as the Government moved further and further away from their target.
	There are many reasons for the Government's failure to achieve the target. As the Secretary of State knows, one of my particular concerns is the extraordinary gap that has opened up between male and female participation in higher education. It is great that 45 per cent. of young women now go to university, but the fact that only 35 per cent. of young men do so tells us that our education system has a serious problem of male under-achievement.
	The Secretary of State disappointed me when the only factual question that we asked in this Chamber about his proposals on maintenance grant, which was repeated so skilfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), did not get a straightforward answer. It is a very simple question. I have to ask Labour Members this: do they believe that if the answer was in any way encouraging it is possible that we might have heard it instead of the endless evasions and contortions of the Secretary of State? I wrote to him in advance, trying to explain that I would be grateful to receive an answer on behalf of many tens of thousands of families.
	In 2007, one of the first acts of the new Prime Minister and the new Secretary of State was to announce a new regime for maintenance grant that applies in 2008. Only a month ago, the Secretary of State announced that he was changing the 2008 regime to apply a different regime for 2009, which will clearly be far less generous because many fewer students will get their maintenance grants than would have done had the 2008 regime continued. Universities will now have three different maintenance grant regimes for students who went up in 2007, in 2008 and in 2009. Only this Government could achieve that, but that is what we are going to have. Young people from tens of thousands of families who had already applied to university are entitled to know how they will be affected by these changes, and we are entitled to know how many fewer students will receive maintenance grant in 2009 than would have received it in 2008. Unlike the intervention by the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink), this is not rocket science. It is a straightforward question: how many people, comparing the 2009 and 2008 regimes, will not be getting maintenance grant?

Stephen Williams: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Willetts: If the hon. Gentleman is going to assist with our inquiries, as they say so often around this House nowadays, then yes, why not?

Stephen Williams: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, although he may regret it. He said that only this Government—I share his criticism of what they have done—could have changed the student grant regimes in such a way. I was a student when the Conservative party was in power, when the grant was reduced every year and benefits were withdrawn. During my three years at university, the regime was different each year.

David Willetts: I am full of sympathy for the hon. Gentleman. The world has changed since then, and many more young people are going to university. We celebrate that fact. Of course, the number of young people going to university surged during the years when we were in government.
	The hon. Gentleman's intervention was not as helpful as I had hoped, because he diverted me from my line of inquiry. Not only Conservative Members but families throughout the country are entitled to know how many fewer young people will get maintenance grant in 2009 than in 2008. We believe that about 40,000 students will no longer get any grant at all compared with the 2008 regime, but we also need to know how many will have a reduction in their grant but still get some of it. There are various estimates going around. We have tried to work it out with the limited resources of Opposition, using the information that is already publicly available. The Secretary of State set out the detail of how the taper is going to work, and we have the provisional figures for the Student Loans Company. It is possible that a further 80,000 students or more, adding up to 120,000 per year, will lose out compared with the previous regime, which over the three years as we get up to a full complement of students means that 360,000 students will lose maintenance grant compared with the 2008 regime.
	If the number is as great as that, it is hard to see how it is possible that two thirds of students will still receive a grant. One of the things that surprised me about the Secretary of State's remarks was that he implied that he still believes that that will happen. On our calculations, that seems most unlikely—we believe that the proportion could be significantly lower under the new regime. Regardless of what one thinks about the announcement that the Government made in 2007 and the financial crisis that they have faced since, surely Members in all parts of the House are entitled to an answer to this simple question, which the Secretary of State seems to have a phobia about answering and has yet again failed to answer. Every time that happens, it confirms our suspicions that large numbers of families are losing out compared with the regime that he proudly announced in his first week as Secretary of State. We should all expect as a minimum that he comes clean on that.
	What we have in the Government's proposals in the Queen's Speech is not reform but change—endless change on the previous structures that the Government themselves put in place. We have seen the failure to achieve more real apprenticeships linked to employers at level 3; the failure of Train to Gain, which should be refocused to provide more financial support for apprenticeships; and the failure to achieve the Government's targets for participation in higher education. That is why Conservative Members have no confidence in this Government's ability to achieve the improvement in skills, education and training that the country so clearly needs as we head into what could be a very severe recession.

Brian Iddon: Thank you for calling me to speak in this debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to participate under your leadership.
	I want to refer to two Bills in the Queen's Speech. I very much welcome the marine and coastal access Bill, which is long overdue. The former Select Committee on Science and Technology published an important report called "Investigating the Oceans", and I hope that some of its recommendations can be taken into account in that legislation. One of our strong recommendations, which the Government have so far rejected, was the establishment of a marine science agency to replace the Inter-Agency Committee on Marine Science and Technology, which does not have many powers and which, we felt, lacks a lot of clout. At the moment, marine policy, for example that on fisheries or shipping, is conducted in silos, but we felt that all marine policy should be pulled together under one controlling organisation. Looking at the report retrospectively, I still believe that, and I ask the Secretary of State and his Department to reconsider that recommendation.
	The Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee has scrutinised the draft apprenticeships Bill, and our report was published late last week. I hope that it will be helpful to Members who serve on the Public Bill Committee.
	The speech by the shadow Secretary of State was extremely negative. Of course, his function is to try to attack the Labour Government, but I recall when I was in a university trying to teach—I say "trying" deliberately—under a Conservative Government, and it was jolly difficult. I have spoken about this before, and I do not want to labour the point again, but at that time there was a huge brain drain. It is right and proper that our new graduate and postgraduate students should go abroad for postgraduate and post-doctoral studies to find out what is going on in the rest of the world, but in the hope that many of them then bring back the new skills gained in other countries, particularly America, Japan and Germany, to apply them in this country. At that time, under a Conservative Government, the huge brain drain was one way. People went across the pond to America, largely, and stayed there; many of them are still there. It is good that under the Labour Government we have attracted a substantial number of them back again, and far fewer have joined the brain drain in that direction. In fact, it is nice to see Americans coming over and joining British research groups for a change, particularly in subjects such as stem cell research. Under the Tories, things got so bad that a membership organisation was established called Save British Science, and people joined it in overwhelming numbers and campaigned to try to do just that. However, the only thing that saved British science was a change of Government in 1997. That organisation, which changed its name under the Labour Government, is now called CASE—the Campaign for Science and Engineering—and is much less militant than it was under the Conservatives. Indeed, it gives helpful advice to the Labour Government.

Phil Willis: Vote Labour!

Brian Iddon: That'll be the day, when they get the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) to vote Labour. I am still trying.
	The best thing that has happened under the Labour Government is that the funding for science, and for STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—will have doubled in real terms by the end of the comprehensive spending review, taking inflation into account. That is a staggering success.

Edward Timpson: I recall that it was not that many months ago that we had a lively discussion about the future of business in the north-west, and I am enjoying listening to the hon. Gentleman's reminiscence about the Conservative Administration. Does he also recall that during the mid-1980s, there were more people on apprenticeships than there are today under a Labour Government?

Brian Iddon: My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) was spot on when he said that the Conservatives wrecked apprenticeships. It might have been the case that there were some when the Conservatives came in, but when they left power, there were hardly any.

Bob Spink: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is one of the most respected Members in this House. Could I drag him away from the negative to the positive, because I was a member of the Conservative team that did the things he describes in education, and in science in particular? Would he share with the House his ideas for enthusing children and for encouraging youngsters to get more involved in science and the STEM subjects today?

Brian Iddon: I am hoping to come to that later on in my speech, if the hon. Gentleman is still here.
	Although the amount of science funding has doubled, in terms of the percentage of gross domestic product, the level of funding is still only half that spent in America. We have crept up closer to many of our European partners, but the Government need to spend even more money on research and development, particularly at a time when we are entering a recession. I believe that the Government have recognised that fact, and that they will introduce a further funding increase after the comprehensive spending review. We are now ahead of Japan in terms of metrics, which is an astonishing success. We are second in the world when it comes to innovation in our universities, however we measure it—be it the quality of publications, the number of publications or citations of publications. We are doing extremely well.
	I want to refer briefly to the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills. The word "science" is included in the name of the Committee, but, sadly, we have not yet got the Secretary of State to add it to the title of the Department, but we are still working on him. The former Select Committee on Science and Technology was able to carry out cross-cutting inquiries across agencies and Departments. We have had a debate on such inquiries before, and I shall not labour the point this evening, but we did some detailed work in that Committee under the two Chairmen in post when I was a member of it. However, the remit of the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills is too broad because although there are many matters that we would like to investigate, for example, the regional development agencies and role of departmental chief scientific advisers, it is clear that we will not get round to them.
	Whereas the Science and Technology Committee largely met on Wednesday mornings, and occasionally on Monday afternoons, the volume of work forces the DIUS Committee to meet on Wednesday mornings and regularly on Monday afternoons, which is putting extreme pressure on Committee members. Membership of the Committee includes those who represent the education side of the debate and those from the science and technology side, which causes tensions in the Committee. I still believe that a cross-cutting science and technology Select Committee would be better, and that education and skills would be better dealt with separately.
	The excuse for not continuing with the Science and Technology Committee last year was that we could not stand the pressure of setting up another Select Committee. But we have just set up regional Select Committees, and we have set up another departmental Select Committee in the shape of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change. I favour a separate Department for Energy and Climate Change, but the work of Members has increased, and I cannot see why such an excuse was used last year when it was decided not to continue with the cross-cutting Science and Technology Committee.
	On Friday, I was at the life sciences department of Manchester university. I am paired with a member of that university through the excellent Royal Society pairing scheme, as are many other hon. Friends and Members of the Opposition; it is an excellent scheme. When I went to the campus of the university, and cast my mind back to 1997 to compare and contrast with how things were, I found that there was no comparison. There are a large number of new buildings on the Manchester university site, and that is not just the case for that university, but for Durham, Hull and my university in Bolton. Every university has erected a tremendous number of new buildings, and carried out a lot of refurbishment of existing buildings, particularly the laboratories, which desperately needed refurbishing. We have had joint infrastructure fund money and science research investment fund money and that funding shows on a visit to a technology or science department in universities.
	It is my impression that younger academics, and some of the middle-management academics, do not yet appreciate what I call the tectonic plate shifts that have occurred in our science, engineering and technology policy in the past 12 months or so. First, we have established three new institutes. In a good move, the Office for Strategic Co-ordination of Health Research has rightly brought together the research carried out by the Medical Research Council and the national health service. The Energy Technologies Institute was created for obvious reasons, and we now have the Technology Strategy Board because we have not been very good at translating our superb innovations into reality as products for export. I shall come back to that point shortly.
	There has been a shift from the physical sciences towards the Medical Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, too, which some physical scientists are complaining about. The universities received the full economic costs of the research grants—FEC—and that is now at a level of 90 per cent, which is also welcome. Under the previous Administration, there was no money to support well-founded laboratories. When visiting laboratories today, I can see where the money has been invested. The Government have rightly created postgraduate training centres and set up six grand challenges on energy, living with environmental change, global threats to security, ageing, the digital economy and nanoscience through engineering to application.
	All those extra creations have come into being during an 18-month period and, although extra money has been given to the science budget, unfortunately pressure has been put on programme grants and responsive mode grants. Members of the DIUS Committee have received a lot of criticism because young academics cannot get research grants to get their programmes off the ground. The only way to conduct research is either for them to do it with their own hands, or do what my generation did—work with a professor. That would not give those young academics much independence.
	In the case of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, fewer than 10 per cent. of the alpha-funded grant bids are funded. The frustration can be felt; I felt it when going round Manchester university on Friday. I am going to Liverpool next week, and I visited Bolton university a few weeks ago. People have ideas, but they are really frustrated that they cannot get responsive mode funding from any of the research councils, except perhaps the Medical Research Council or the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, to carry out that vital blue-sky research. We ignore such research at our peril, because the people doing the big programmes—such programmes are necessary and I support them—will have no young scientists if young scientists cannot start on independent research in universities that are perhaps not part of the Russell group.

Rob Marris: I agree with my hon. Friend. I am a great supporter of pure science, in contradistinction to applied science, although sometimes they overlap, owing to the passage of time. Does he agree that a university should have significant research capabilities? Otherwise, it is simply a college—worth while as that is, a university without research is not a university. Does he also agree that in the next round of research funding allocations, the Government might want to consider pooling expertise among institutions, to enable them to have access to that research funding, even if they are not Russell group universities, such as the university of Wolverhampton, which is the most accessible mainstream university in the country that is not part of the Russell group?

Brian Iddon: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend.
	What the Government are worried about—hon. Members in all parts of the Chamber should be worried, too—is this: if we double the amount of money from the Government, not to mention from industry, going into research and development, we would expect to see outcomes now, after 10 years of extra funding. I have warned the academics several times that the Government are looking for outcomes, but there is a problem. The innovation and the R and D in our universities are as good as any in the world. The big difficulty is getting the products through the spin-out companies, but we are doing better than ever on that. I have never seen so many spin-out companies, so many incubators and science parks dotted around our universities or so many clusters of companies feeding into them, but still we do not see the volume of outcomes that the Government perhaps expect.
	However, the academics wanted me to remind the House today that it takes 10 or even up to 30 years for a brilliant invention such as DNA fingerprinting—that is just one example that flies off the top of my head—to become a reality that is useful for society. That cannot be done in 10 years, the academics tell me; it will take far longer than that. Perhaps we are therefore being over-anxious about that aspect of our work. The Sainsbury review, by Lord Sainsbury, flagged up those issues for us.

Evan Harris: I am listening to the hon. Gentleman carefully and agree with much of what he says. Does he recognise that the problem is often not so much the fact that there are spin-out companies, but the difficulty that smaller companies face in getting the next stage of investment funding to bring their products closer to market? That is what high-tech and biotech companies in my constituency are saying. With the current squeeze on big pharma, smaller biotech companies are finding it much harder to get licensing agreements from pharmaceutical companies, which is part of the same problem of moving to the next stage.

Brian Iddon: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentions that, because if he had read the business supplement of  The Observer yesterday, as I did, he would know that the Government have just put in place a fund of £1 billion in extra money to do exactly what he thinks should be done. The article said:
	"The plan, conceived by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta), was fleshed out in discussions at Downing Street"
	only last Thursday at which the noble Lords Drayson and Sainsbury were present. The announcement was made pretty soon after that. The scheme will mean the
	"doubling of government funding for scientific research at universities, which has led to an increased number of spin-outs,"
	as I have mentioned,
	"in IT, biotech, nanotech and green technologies".
	That must be good news. I do not know whether it has percolated through yet, but it means £1 billion of extra money. The difficulty, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is that there is a deep valley between innovation and product called death valley. The venture capitalists are not putting in the money necessary to get across that valley, but the money that the Government are putting in will help.

Phil Willis: Like my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. Will he confirm that the money that was announced in  The Observer, rather than in the House, was announced in  The Observer because it is not new money at all? It is just existing money that has been recycled, unless the Secretary of State can contradict me.

Brian Iddon: I am sure that we will hear the truth of that argument when this debate is summed up. Nevertheless, £1 billion is going in to help turn our excellent inventions into useful products for society.
	At long last we have a new President in America, thank goodness. President-elect Obama, who takes control on 20 January, has already announced increases in the science budget for American universities and industry. He has also announced that stem cell research will be funded federally. However, if we squeeze our young academics in the way that I have described, the brain drain might kick off again. I do not want that to happen. We must encourage our young scientists to stay here and continue their good work.

Ian Gibson: Does my hon. Friend agree that there has been a brain drain into Canary Wharf, too? Many young scientists found that the financial industry was the place to go to get the money and the lives that they wanted; but now, with the financial industry suffering somewhat, there is a reversal of that process. People are beginning to teach and to bring science into schools, so out of a recession good things can happen.

Brian Iddon: My hon. Friend is right. In fact, one of our Ministers was telling me the other day that we have the best cohort of young teachers in training now that we have had in generations, which must be good for schools. We have excellent teachers in schools already, and when those in training replace the ones who will shortly retire, I am sure that we will continue to have excellent teaching in our schools.
	Let me turn to another problem that I want to flag up, which has been raised by the Million+ think tank. Research and development funding is becoming more elite. Larger grants are going to smaller numbers of the more elite universities, which are largely in the Russell group. Million+ and others in the academic community are arguing—I refer to what my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) said about how universities should be doing research—that universities that are not in the top flight, namely the Russell group, are finding it more and more difficult to secure such funding. Million+ has recommended that a sum of money be set aside so that vital work that might not be of international standing, but which is certainly of national standing, can be done in those universities and has suggested a figure of around 10 per cent.
	My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State seems to think that the Million+ group is asking for 10 per cent. to be creamed off the current quality-related funding, but it is not asking for that. Million+ has recognised that there have been substantial year-on-year increases in QR funding. It is asking whether 10 per cent. of those substantial increases, not 10 per cent. of the existing money, could be put into those universities that are not so fortunate in winning QR funding. Let me say straight away that Million+ does not want that money for non-quality work, but for quality work of national standing, instead of international standing.
	My university—Bolton university—suffers in that respect. It used to do a lot of work with local industry. Local industry could pay for the contract work that it asked the university to do on its behalf, but if the research groups are not there, that research will not happen. I visited the fire materials group at Bolton university a few days ago. The fire materials group is a centre of excellence for research into flame-retardant materials, fires in households and other vital areas of that kind. Hon. Members will not find many other universities that are researching every aspect of fire in that way. Such specialist work is being undertaken in Wolverhampton, Chester and Bolton. We ignore it at our peril, because if neither industry nor and central Government fund it, those small specialist groups will disappear and we will be the losers, not the gainers.

Rob Marris: My hon. Friend is very generous in giving way. The university of Wolverhampton is a large university and one of the top 10 in terms of numbers of students. However, the QR funding that it receives—its research is judged to be of national importance, not international importance—is some £200,000 a year. Fifteen miles down the road, the university of Birmingham—a smaller university, but a Russell group university—receives tens of millions of pounds a year. Wolverhampton university is not saying that we should take that money away from Birmingham; it is saying—and I agree—that the imbalance is a little too great.

Brian Iddon: Yet again, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.
	The Select Committee has recently returned from China and Japan, and I would like to refer to something that particularly impressed me. As I have already said, the Technology Strategy Board will hopefully transfer invention into useful products for society, but in Japan there was a different model that we looked at. It was called an innovation hub, but its authentic title is the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology—AIST for short. I have not seen anything quite like it anywhere else in the world. For example, Japan's large electronic companies—we all know the names from our Sanyo or Toshiba televisions and so forth—all come together in this institute after a new invention has been made that might benefit the whole world, not just Japanese society. The companies put in their own money to supplement the Japanese Government money in order to explore the new invention and find out whether it may result in any commercial products. At the point when these companies believe that some commercial products can be developed, they of course break out of this institute and go back to their own research bodies, subsequently using the research that they all pooled together in order to bring commercial products forward for the market. I say to the Secretary of State that I think that that model is really worth looking into, especially if he has not come across it before.
	My final plea is not to prevent international students from coming to Britain. Apparently, we have backed out of the European blue card scheme in order to bring in our own points-based immigration scheme, which will affect students as it will affect others coming into this country to study, do research or work. I refer to the CASE policy report on the role of international students in British universities. If we allow them to stay, many will go on to do some superb work. The report makes some very good recommendations about how to attract foreign students to study and do research and development work in British universities and how to get them to stay here in order to help British industry and commerce develop its exports. I hope that the Secretary of State will take some of those points into account.

Sarah Teather: The rules of the House dictate that Liberal Democrats get just one Front-Bench contribution during the day's debate on the Gracious Speech. Bearing that in mind, and given current economic circumstances, we felt that housing was the most pressing of the three important issues grouped together for debate today. That is why I, as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for housing, am speaking on behalf of my colleagues—it is not just because I miss debating with the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts). I have say, however, that, a year on, it does not seem that the debate has moved on a great deal— [Interruption.] I am making no comment on that, but explaining why I—rather than my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams), who shadows the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills—am responding to the debate.
	I am relieved to note that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) was in his place for the opening speeches, despite his pantomime —[Interruption.] There is obviously a comic genius on the Government Front Bench. It is a little odd that the Conservative housing spokesperson is not in his place today, especially when I thought that the Conservatives had actually chosen the particular days for these debates. I know that they have been changed, but it seems a little strange. I do not know whether the Conservative Whips fail to communicate well with their own Members or whether this subject has just dropped down the priority list during the week.
	The housing crisis in this country is not new and it is not merely a product of the recession. Waiting lists for affordable housing to rent have been rising steadily over the last decade in which Labour has been in power and now stand at around 1.7 million families. In common with those of most other Members, my advice surgeries are filled with desperate families struggling to get decent accommodation they can afford. There are families suffering overcrowding and families whose children have nowhere to play, let alone do their homework; there are families whose children are sharing the parent's bed because another sibling is already sleeping on the sofa; there are families for whom overcrowding is causing condensation, which has led in turn to mould so that the children all have asthma—or, even worse, the whole family has tuberculosis. That may sound like Victorian Britain, but it is happening in new Labour Britain today. This problem is not new; it is just getting worse.
	About 90,000 children live in temporary accommodation in England, and two thirds of those live in London. In some boroughs such as Haringey, one in seven children live in temporary accommodation; in Brent, the comparable figure is one in 10. One of my constituents, who is almost my age, has spent her entire life in temporary accommodation. She was born into temporary accommodation and is now raising her own children in temporary accommodation; the repeated moves and long-term uncertainty have blighted a whole generation.
	This country's housing crisis has been and continues to be about supply and demand, and it affects everyone in the chain: it prices homes out of reach for first-time buyers, it prices renting out of reach even for some families on average earnings, and it puts huge downward pressure on those at the bottom of the earnings table who are forced to queue hopelessly for social housing. What is new is the impact of the recession on those who were previously secure in their homes: families who could afford to pay the rent but who, now out of work, find themselves looking for emergency help from their council; and families owning their own property whose circumstances changed so that they find themselves falling behind with their mortgage payments.

Julia Goldsworthy: My hon. Friend raises a very important point about rents. Is she not surprised that while the Government have gone to great lengths to declare their desire to assist people who are struggling to pay their mortgage, they have forgotten the need to provide similar support to people who lose their jobs and can no longer afford to pay their rent?

Sarah Teather: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Part of the problem with the current housing allowance system is that it often slow to kick in. I certainly see constituents in that difficult position and I would be very surprised if other hon. Members across the country did not see it, too. It takes a long time to kick in and a long time to be administered, particularly if there are any subsequent changes in circumstances.
	As my hon. Friend said, there has been considerable debate about what to do when people lose their jobs or become sick, but many people who own their own homes may find themselves in difficulty just as easily if they finish their fixed rate mortgage period and find they cannot move to a cheaper deal because they are now in negative equity or because they have inadequate equity in their property for the new climate of lending. The immediate and pressing danger is that we will see many more families seeking emergency help, which will be a disaster for them, and near impossible for councils to manage.
	The Council of Mortgage Lenders has predicted that repossessions may rise to 75,000 next year—a figure that my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) predicted some time ago. The Government have taken positive steps in trying to head off large-scale repossessions, but there is a great deal more concrete work that they should do in this area.
	On the surface, last week's announcements on interest holidays were very positive, but as always with such headline grabbers, the devil will be in the detail. The Minister for Housing, who is not in her place today, has suggested that just 9,000 families may be eligible for this scheme— [Interruption.] I see, of course, that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), who shares responsibility for housing, is in his place. There are so many Ministers, but so few names that we are allowed to name in the House!
	As I was saying, just 9,000 families may be eligible for the scheme, making it a drop in the ocean in the bigger picture of repossessions, and it will leave 66,000 families out in the cold. Similarly, it is not yet clear what the criteria for eligibility will be. Will families need to be in receipt of benefits to be eligible? Will it apply only to mortgages or will it also apply to second charges? Will the same rules apply to families with two earners as with the income support for mortgage interest scheme, where if the main earner loses their job the family is ineligible to claim if the other partner earns anything at all, even if they just work part-time and earn very little? We certainly know that the scheme will not apply to those whose mortgages are not with the main eight lenders, meaning that around one in three mortgage holders are not eligible.
	I expect the Government to respond by saying that this is what the pre-action protocol is for, but while all of the sentiment in the pre-action protocol is welcome, as is the stipulation that it must apply to all lenders, it is not clear who will be policing the protocol. It does not give the courts powers, for example, to throw out a case if lenders have not followed the protocol, or to issue a fine.
	If the Government want to give the courts teeth to enforce good practice on repossessions, they will have to be prepared to update our outdated mortgage law. It baffles me that they are unwilling to do so, and they had a prime opportunity in the Banking Bill in the previous Session. My colleagues tabled amendments to that effect, which the Government rejected. The Government also had a perfect opportunity in last week's Gracious Speech. Again, they chose not to take it. Mortgage law is mired in its common law origins in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is based on the mortgage contract, so it is weighted in favour of the lender, giving the courts only limited powers to intervene. If the Government want to give courts powers to intervene, they will have to legislate to make that possible. Surely now is the perfect time to drag mortgage law into the 21st century.
	It is unacceptable that lenders have the right to sell a property over a borrower's head without first going through the courts, for example. Certainly, there have been times when that has happened. In a classic case earlier this year, known as the Horsham case, the lender exercised its power of sale with the borrower still in possession. The new owner then brought proceedings to evict the borrower as a trespasser, and the borrower has lost any claim to equity as a result. The case appeared to give the green light to lenders to circumvent the courts' powers altogether by exercising power of sale. Foreclosure, although little used, is still available. It enables a lender to obtain an order for possession, but in doing so extinguishes the borrower's equity of redemption, so that the lender keeps the entire proceeds of the sale. It is hard to justify that remedy having any place in modern mortgage law.

James McGovern: Does the hon. Lady acknowledge the recent work done by the Prime Minister and Chancellor to encourage banks to be more sympathetic and flexible towards home owners before considering repossession?

Sarah Teather: As I said a moment ago—I heard a lot of talking to my left, so it is possible that the hon. Gentleman could not hear me—unfortunately, although there is much good sentiment in the Government's proposals, there is no enforcement power for the courts or possibility of policing them. The courts cannot throw out cases if a lender does not follow the protocol, or issue a fine. Although I welcome everything in the pre-action protocol, some of it needs to be put on a statutory footing if it is to have any teeth. I do not disagree with the sentiment, but there are more practical ways of achieving the aim.
	I would like the Government to legislate for the following: to require a lender that wishes to enforce its security to do so only through the courts; to give the court a general discretion in mortgage cases to make orders that are just, according to the case; to restrict lenders' statutory and contractual power of sale by making it subject to the requirement to obtain an order of the court; and to abolish the common law remedy of foreclosure. I hope that the Minister will say why the Government have so far refused to do that.
	I am also disappointed that the Government have not taken immediate action to regulate the private sale-and-rent-back market, to which many vulnerable people are already falling prey. The Minister for Housing has called such practices unscrupulous and promised to tackle them, but no plans have been forthcoming. I would like those practices to be brought under Financial Services Authority regulation. When will the Government do so? Similarly, the Government have promised to put in place a public scheme to allow people to downscale their investment in their property and move towards shared ownership, but no details have yet been forthcoming.
	I am also disappointed that the Government have not taken advantage of the current economic downturn to plan sensibly for the future. The recession has opportunities as well as threats, and we have a duty to make the best of current circumstances. I would like to have seen more money front-loaded from the comprehensive spending review for housing associations and councils to buy up land and appropriate housing now, while land and property is cheaper, so that we can tackle the long-term problems of access to affordable housing. In the short term, greater flexibility might be needed in some areas about how much subsidy is available for each unit. Housing associations say that building social housing has dried up; they can no longer proceed with projects that rely on cross-subsidy from private sales. Similarly, councils rely on section 106 money from private developments for their own social building programmes, and those too have all but dried up in many areas. We cannot allow all social housing building to grind to a halt, because the consequences will last a generation.

Evan Harris: I endorse strongly my hon. Friend's comments. There is the potential for a win-win-win if the Government provide the resources to allow councils and housing associations to build even small schemes, or buy houses on the open market. That will provide homes for those in housing need and enable people in the construction industry to carry on working and not fall into housing need themselves. Will the Government do something about that urgently?  [Interruption.]

Sarah Teather: The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hartlepool, says from a sedentary position that the Government have done something. They have announced some money, but we are asking for greater front-loading. They have not freed up councils to borrow so that they can build. The money continues to go through housing associations, so councils, which must pick up the pieces when everything falls apart, have little power to address the problem. If they are to be able to borrow to build, the Government need to make changes to the stability of their income. They need to end the process whereby one council tenant in one area subsidies a council tenant a long way away in another borough. The subsidy should come from general taxation, so that councils can be sure of their income and of right-to-buy capital housing receipts. That would enable them to borrow in the same way as housing associations.

Rob Marris: I agree with many of the hon. Lady's comments in this part of her speech. Is she aware that, a few months ago, the Government could have bought a major house builder for £2 billion? That house builder had 110,000 building plots, which works out at about £26,000 per building plot—the prices are probably lower now. We could have done exactly what the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) said, and put unemployed construction workers to work, and build housing, of which the United Kingdom has a huge, and worsening, shortage.

Sarah Teather: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. We will see many developments that are not completed and that lie empty, especially flats. One of the problems for housing associations is that the Government wimped out of producing the same regulations for private property as for social housing for rent. If those regulations were much more closely aligned, councils and housing associations could buy up many more of those properties, which could be used to house many more vulnerable people. The Government could still do that in relation to land, and the hon. Gentleman's point about the construction industry is important. If we lose the opportunity, and the construction industry takes a deep hit, skills will be lost, career paths will be changed, and it will take a decade to get plans back on track after the recession is over.
	I am disappointed that instead of announcing a costly VAT cut, which will make little difference to anybody buying anything less expensive than an imported flat-screen television, the Government did not equalise VAT on new build and renovation. That would make a genuine difference to properties lying empty in this country. At a time of recession, we will see many more empty properties blighting streets and neighbourhoods, and yet more families with nowhere to live. The Government could deliver a practical solution.
	Last week's Queen's Speech failed to mention housing once. The Prime Minister's response was long on headlines but as yet is still short on detail. Unfortunately, that is typical of much of the Government's response to housing. They have said much, and promised more, but little so far has been forthcoming. By the end of next year, 75,000 families may be repossessed; 1.7 million families are waiting for social housing; one in 10 of the children in my constituency are in temporary accommodation. The Queen's Speech was a wasted opportunity. My constituents cannot wait while the Government promise to act. The Government need to act now.

Lindsay Roy: It is a great privilege to have been elected to this Chamber and to have the opportunity this evening to make my maiden speech.
	The traditions of this Chamber bring many benefits—I am told that this is a prime education forum. Had I been making an address in another educational context, Members would have been subjected to the obligatory PowerPoint presentation, sometimes described as an overhead on steroids. The four weeks since the by-election have been frenetic—"whirlwind" would be a euphemistic term to describe my induction. I thank many Members, across parties, for their camaraderie, forbearance and directions on meeting a lost soul around the parliamentary estate. Not once have I been directed to the wrong Lobby—yet.
	During the campaign, I was asked how a novice would cope in Parliament. I assured the questioner that I had no aspirations to become Leader of the Opposition, seeking to lead the country—and that, as a head teacher, if I could cope with 1,500 boisterous youngsters, I could surely survive here. That was, of course, before my first experience of Prime Minister's Question Time.
	I plan to contribute directly to this interesting debate in due course, but first, in line with tradition, I wish to refer to my predecessor in the House, the late John MacDougall. That is particularly appropriate and particularly poignant, because today, as we remember John, would have been his 61st birthday.
	John was a first-class constituency Member who earned respect in all the communities in central Fife. He was a man of integrity, a man of compassion and a man of good humour, who had high aspirations for his constituency. He believed that education was a personal engine for development. Indeed, as leader of Fife council he introduced universal nursery education for four-year-olds long before other parts of the United Kingdom. He lobbied hard to secure investment in skills for the world of work beyond school and for work-force training, a theme to which I shall return later. He also championed the interests of the elderly in our communities, liberating senior citizens in enabling them to access public transport at no personal cost.
	John successfully led a campaign against the break-up of the ancient kingdom of Fife during local government reorganisation, recognising the dividends of a united kingdom. He enthused about the benefit that accrued to this constituency, and to Scotland, through its remaining an integral part of the United Kingdom. Indeed, as a passionate and patriotic Scot, he emphasised that the saltire was not the sole preserve of one political party. The Scottish National party has a tendency to claim it as its own, but he reminded Scots regularly, as I do—no heckling!—that it belongs to all Scots, the vast majority of whom have no appetite for separation.
	However, it is at times like this that we must remember that there are more important things than politics. John's life was tragically cut short by an asbestos-related lung condition, mesothelioma.
	Sadly, John has not been alone in suffering from industry-related diseases in the constituency. In 2006, in his maiden speech, the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie) warned of a national mesothelioma hot spot. Working conditions in the mines and the dockyards have had a devastating impact on many lives in our constituencies It is to the great credit of this Government that compensation schemes have been put in place to support people with work-related and debilitating diseases. Those schemes have been well received and generally successful, and I am aware that Ministers are currently trying to ensure that all cases are dealt with in a timely fashion and with minimum bureaucracy. However, while the legal process by and large has been handled in a very responsible fashion, concerns remain about a handful of legal firms that have exploited the situation to their distinct benefit. Ministers have also been tackling that issue in a serious and determined manner, trying to ensure that maximum dividends go to the people who have been so adversely affected.
	Over the past two years, knowing full well the seriousness of his condition, John demonstrated outstanding courage and commitment to his constituents. He was still active in the last two weeks of his life, and the House is all the poorer as a result of his untimely passing.
	In characteristic fashion, John's wife Cathy is currently trying to set up a trust in John's name to undertake further research on asbestos-related diseases.
	John's perennial quest to improve the lives of others and seek fairness and social justice is also mine. I hope that I can live up to the challenge in the same way as John, and go on to inspire people and enhance their life prospects.
	Like John, I have spent all my working life in Fife, and most of it in my constituency. Let me explain to Members who are not aware of the location that Fife is on the east coast of Scotland, south of Dundee and north of Edinburgh. The largest community is Glenrothes, a new town that was established in 1948 to tap the huge coal reserves at Rothes colliery. However, after major mine flooding Glenrothes had to diversify very quickly, and soon attracted a diverse range of new industries and businesses.
	Many other smaller but equally important communities make up the constituency, many of which were devastated in the 1980s as a result of the quick demise of traditional industries. They demonstrate a strong sense of identity. They have proud traditions as caring communities, supporting the weak and vulnerable in society. In my opinion, the boundary commission did a disservice to those many other communities, such as Kinglassie, Cardenden, Leven, Methil, Buckhaven, the Wemyss villages, Windygates, Kennoway, Thornton and Kirkcaldy North, by calling the constituency Glenrothes. I should prefer a constituency title reflecting the composition of the constituency more accurately, and I will pursue that further in due course.
	Members will be interested to know that my constituency neighbour is my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. Indeed, until recently I was rector, or head teacher, of the Prime Minister's old school—but not, as one reporter commented, the Prime Minister's old head teacher. Had that been the case, I think I would have been in the Guinness Book of Records as a new entrant to the House of Commons in my mid-eighties. However, the change in title from rector to Member of Parliament means that I no longer receive correspondence from other parts of the United Kingdom addressed "Rector of Kirkcaldy high school" and beginning "Dear Reverend"—or, in one case, "Your Eminence".
	Let me assure hon. Members that, contrary to press speculation, I was not approached personally by the Prime Minister to stand as a candidate. I have concrete evidence to substantiate that assertion. When I challenged a reporter about the timing of the alleged early phone call, expecting a day in the week to be cited, she suggested that it had been made just after 8 am. I understand that it is common knowledge that when the Prime Minister telephones early in the morning, it is between 5 am and 6 am at the latest.
	I have taken advice, and have been assured that telling tales out of school does not constitute a leak. I can therefore reveal exclusively that, when at school, the Prime Minister was involved in a very unfortunate cover-up. The Prime Minister was a talented sportsman. His athletics victory in the Fife championships was described in a superb piece of hyperbole. The school magazine editor of the day noted that he had won the 400 yards by "miles". However, the editor later lamented that the Prime Minister had been disqualified because he had worn a rugby shirt over his vest, thereby concealing his number. Clearly the Prime Minister has learned lessons from his school by experience: he has been very open with numbers as the Government have supported people through the current economic downturn, although whether all the numbers would fit on an athletics vest is another matter.
	The Prime Minister also received the leather strap for a misdemeanour at Kirkcaldy high school. I understand that he has no sadistic tendencies, but he does take pleasure in leathering the Opposition. [Hon. Members: "Oh!"] Can do better.
	Regeneration schemes have brought new opportunities to my constituency. Over the last 10 years, 10,000 jobs have been created in Fife. In my constituency today, that diversity is reflected in well-established businesses such as Tullis Russell, which produces high-quality paper. The energy company npower has just invested £100 million in a biomass plant, thereby reducing the carbon footprint dramatically. Diageo—which, I am sure, is popular with Members here—produces superb Scotch whiskies, and recently won the prestigious national gold award for healthy working lives.
	Raytheon, which operates in the defence industry, is a major high-technology employer, and there are new industries, too: BiFab is in the vanguard of alternative green technology developments, manufacturing platforms for offshore wind turbines and developing structures to harness tidal energy. Incidentally, it cannot praise highly enough the continued support for, and investment in, its extension plans from the Royal Bank of Scotland.
	What do these companies, and the many other successful businesses in my constituency, have in common? They sustain their success through difficult times by being innovative and proactive. In particular, they have anticipated changing market conditions. They have managed change well, they have consulted their work force and, above all, they have invested in people to ensure sustainability, competitiveness and prosperity. In short, they have translated good ideas into effective practice.
	The same challenges lie ahead in politics, especially during what has been described by many as the first financial crisis of the global age. It is often said that vision without action equates to daydreaming, and action without vision inevitably leads to chaos. We live in unprecedented times, with global economic challenges that will influence the lives of all of us, so thank goodness for a Prime Minister and Government with the clear vision to lead us through these demanding times with a well thought-out action plan for the next few years—no heckling, please. This strategic plan should take us through the downturn with minimal impact compared with other countries, and bring stability and a return to growth in the years ahead.
	As a newcomer to Parliament, I have heard nothing to convince me that the Opposition have any viable alternatives—certainly, in my book doing nothing is not an option. Like John MacDougall before me, I emphasise the need to continue to invest in people by enhancing training and professional development. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, it is relatively easy during an economic downturn to hit apparently soft targets such as skills training and development. However, if we do not nurture human capacities and unlock the potential of our work force, we will not have a competitive edge as a nation when the upturn comes.
	Lord Leitch of Oakley noted in his recent Carnegie lecture that, in terms of current global economic competitiveness, despite the strengths of the UK's education system, our productivity is distinctly average; he described it as "undistinguished mediocrity". Competitors such as the USA, France and Germany are at least 15 to 20 per cent. ahead in the productivity stakes. This is not about protecting business from change; it is about being proactive in preparing for it.
	In my professional field, I have worked with colleagues to shape the future in education, and I have often used the following anonymous quotation to urge people to try to take ownership of their destiny:
	"Traveller, there is no path; we make the path as we go—on the journey to improvement" .
	In other words, whatever the support, only we—the people in a particular business, community or service—can fix things. A positive attitude, optimism and a can-do mentality are of fundamental importance.
	The Government must be congratulated on their investment in modern apprenticeships. It is through effective leadership and skills training that we will nurture creators of wealth. It is disappointing that the Scottish Executive have not yet made the same commitment to modern apprenticeships north of the border, and I hope that MSP John Park's Bill to extend modern and adult apprenticeships will receive cross-party support in Holyrood, thereby ensuring that Scots youngsters have the same opportunities as those in the rest of the UK.
	We must do more, however, to bridge the academic-vocational divide, and ensure parity of esteem for vocational qualifications and extend the scope of vocational degrees. For too long, they have been perceived as the poor relation, but such qualifications will be critical in reinvigorating our economy. We must do more, too, in targeting training to future employment opportunities, and arrange that training is demand-led. As a matter of priority, we must do more to address the challenges faced by a small but significant cohort of our population who are not functionally literate and numerate. To be world class and highly competitive in the global marketplace, upskilling must be a key national objective, and this Government have extended their commitment to guide and facilitate such progress.
	For politicians, and for business, this shared skills agenda demands continuing priority, passion and perseverance. Quite simply, we cannot afford to fall behind; we need to unlock the vast reserves of human potential, and to build a fairer and more prosperous society. It is imperative, particularly during these difficult economic times, that we invest in people, look forward with optimism, talk up the successes and focus on the things that really matter.
	In conclusion, I return to the examples of best practice cited earlier from my constituency, both in business and social investment. For the future of this great country, the drive to enhance economic and social skills must be relentless as we strive to improve the life prospects and chances of our constituents. As a former rector, I have spent years leading other learners, but have had to demonstrate throughout my professional career that I am a leading learner myself. The last few weeks have been challenging and I have been on a steep learning curve. This applies not only to Parliament, but on the doorstep.
	When canvassing, we see life "in the raw". In the later part of the campaign, I met a lady who was obviously somewhat intoxicated. Aware of party political interest in happy hours and excessive alcohol consumption—I must make it clear that of course I am not referring specifically to Members—I asked how many drinks she had had, to which she replied, "Son, I'm an alcoholic, not an accountant."
	I am grateful for this opportunity to make my maiden speech. I also appreciate the words of reassurance and encouragement received from many Members. "Don't worry", they said, "it will be straightforward—and not all will be listening anyway, and some might be asleep. It is not a daunting experience." I can assure Members that it is, although I understand that few acknowledge that this is the case until the experience is over.
	Finally, I have had the privilege of leading two large successful secondary schools, and I think that it is entirely appropriate that I conclude by citing their mottos. The first echoes the theme of my speech. It comes from Inverkeithing high school—"Grow by Choice". The second summarises my commitment to this Parliament and to my constituents: "I will strive to do my utmost." Now, where have we heard that before?

Tony Baldry: To be able from time to time to congratulate a Member on a maiden speech is one of the genuine privileges of being in this House, and I think all Members will agree that we have just heard an outstandingly good maiden speech. The hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) is clearly rooted in his constituency, and his experience comes from being rooted in it. It was a witty speech, and I say to the hon. Gentleman that if he can make colleagues in this House laugh occasionally, he will be more than halfway to holding their attention. I am sure we will hear a lot more from the hon. Gentleman in the future.
	The hon. Gentleman and I share two things at least. The first is a love of the Union. My mother is a Scot; her name is Oina Paterson. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman and I are both constituency neighbours of the leaders of our parties. That can sometimes be good news, but it can on occasion mean that one really has to check the line to take; otherwise, we can find ourselves saying to every inquiry, "I do not do surveys," if we do not want to have embarrassing discussions with the Whips as to why we appear to be taking a somewhat different line from the leader of our party.
	We all look at the Queen's Speech from the perspective of what it says to speak to the condition of our own constituencies. Interestingly, the proposed subject for today's debate is employment, universities and skills and housing. We have heard very little about employment, other than what the Government intend to do to reorganise the Learning and Skills Council and other such things; they are just reorganising the furniture of the machinery of government. The recession is hitting the M40 corridor with some vengeance. Last week, Aston Martin announced that it was making a third of its work force redundant at Gaydon, and Honda announced that it was looking for a buyer for its Formula 1 team at Brackley and that if it did not find one, it was simply going to pull out and close altogether.
	A vibrant specialist, high quality motor racing industry has always been based along the corridor from Longbridge to Cowley, which goes up the M40, providing highly skilled jobs. That is reflected in the fact that Banbury is home to excellent companies such as Prodrive; indeed, when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Banbury the other day to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the borough of Banbury's having received a charter, Prince Philip, unsurprisingly, visited Prodrive. So, it is a matter of concern when high quality, specialist automotive engineering jobs such as those disappear in such large numbers. I pray to God that Honda finds a new buyer, because it generates many excellent supply jobs not only for itself, but throughout the local economy. It will be incredibly bad news if that starts to unwind.
	The M40 corridor is not only losing jobs in high-tech manufacturing, as we saw—again this happened last week—with what happened to the Alden Group, a printing business that was based in Oxford, but is now based in Witney. It was a family business going back six generations; it was second only to Oxford University Press. It had been sold by the family earlier this year to a German company as a vibrant, strong going concern, but last week the administrators were called in. I do not know the exact details, but I would be willing to speculate that it was not because of any inherent weakness in the Alden Group. I suspect that, as with many companies, a hedge fund or some other organisation in the new company's structure found itself in financial difficulties, that necessitated a fire sale, its investments were undermined and unwound and that lead to the loss of jobs.
	The recession is already hitting the M40 corridor, but research by the Local Government Association tends to suggest that counties such as Oxfordshire will be hit far worse by this recession than by any previous one and that Oxfordshire will be hit far worse than many other parts of the United Kingdom, not least because of the large number of jobs in Oxfordshire that depend on financial services. The jobs of people who travel to London, Reading and other financial centres on a daily basis may start to unwind. Such people will never have expected to have been out of work or to have lost their jobs.
	What help will such people receive? They will go to Jobcentre Plus and they might be eligible for jobseeker's allowance, and I wish to make two points on that. We have heard a lot today about training—Train to Gain, adult training and other types of training. When people become unemployed, they often want to acquire new skills, perhaps to find other opportunities in the world of work, but one of the perversities of claiming JSA is that people cannot train while doing so. The other day, I learned of a constituent of mine who had been made redundant and who had decided to use his savings to train to become a driving instructor. He discovered that because the job centre did not consider him as being available for full-time employment, he lost his JSA, so he was doubly hit. I hope that Ministers will examine the ability of those who are made unemployed to find opportunities to train without losing their benefit.
	Many people who have skills will want to contribute those to the community by doing voluntary work while they are looking for work, but they, too, find their claims for JSA undermined. I say to Ministers that there is a difference between the welfare reforms that the Government are introducing in the Queen's Speech, which seek to get those who have never been in work into the world of work, and the system in respect of people who have been in the world of work, desperately want to get back into it as quickly as possible and want to make a contribution to the community or to acquire new skills while they are unemployed—for the shortest period of time. Our system must recognise the contribution and aspirations of those who have been out of work and want to get back into it as quickly as possible.
	For many of those who lose their jobs, life will be an enormous shock; it will be very dislocating, particularly if they have been working in other parts of the country, such as London. One thing that I hope we can do in Oxfordshire—I am discussing this with Oxfordshire county council and the Oxfordshire Economic Partnership—is set up informal jobs clubs in Banbury and Bicester, whereby people who have lost their jobs can come together to take strength from counselling and the experience of others, and can have the support of outreach workers from Jobcentre Plus and the LSC—until it disappears. Why on earth, yet again, should another bit of the machinery of government be abolished just when it might be helpful? Such clubs could also provide people with access to intelligence about what might be happening in the labour market. In short, we should make it clear to them that the community wishes to do everything that it can to support them and get them back into the world of work as speedily as possible. Each and every one of the unemployment statistics is an individual person who has a family and who has individual ambitions and aspirations. Getting such people back into the world of work as speedily as possible is the collective responsibility of us all.
	The economy of my constituency is almost entirely dependent on small and medium-sized businesses. What I find so unbelievably frustrating about this Government is not only that they are strong on rhetoric and headlines, but when one starts to dig into the headlines, one finds that there is just no substance. In the pre-Budget report, the Chancellor of the Exchequer devotes a whole section to "Supporting business", in which he makes the following acknowledgment:
	"Businesses are facing an exceptionally challenging economic climate with uncertainty over the short to medium term."
	He then goes on to give some indication of the help that the Government are supposedly giving to small and medium businesses. Measures to help those firms facing credit constraints include a new small business finance scheme to support up to £1 billion of bank lending to small exporters, a £50 million fund to convert business debt into equity and a £25 million regional loan transition fund. On the surface, that is all good stuff, so I tabled some parliamentary questions to the Treasury, asking how small businesses might access those funds. All those questions were transferred to other Departments, so they will, I hope, be answered in due course.
	Not surprisingly, however, it was not long before I started to get letters and e-mails from businesses in my constituency saying, "Hey, we'd like to know how to access this money and help, because no one is telling us where to go, and wherever we go, we're told to go somewhere else." For example, the director of a marketing company in my patch, which had 17 employees in September, e-mailed me to say:
	"On the 25th November the chancellor announced a £1 billion small business finance scheme designed to help struggling companies gain credit during these difficult times. This whole scenario started when I tried to find out who would be managing the fund and what the route to the fund was. Firstly I contacted Banbury Chamber of Commerce and they...suggest I contact Business link. This I did at the Thame office. They had no knowledge of the fund and couldn't help. I then had a call from the Chamber saying the funds were being managed by Regional Development Agencies."
	Over the past few days, my office and I have been trying to discover just where these funds are, and it is the most extraordinarily frustrating experience. The pre-Budget report would tend to suggest that some of these funds are being managed by the RDA. I telephoned the South East England Development Agency, which covers Oxfordshire, and I asked how small businesses could access the new small business financial scheme designed to help struggling small companies, and it said that it did not really know anything about it and suggested calling Business Link. So the next day, we asked the same question of SEEDA, and we were again told to call Business Link, but given a different number. We were told that if the business were eligible, Business Link, which is funded by SEEDA, could give advice on how to apply. So we called Business Link, and it said that it does not give funding directly, only advice and information. It also said that it had no information about the new funding, but it would do some research and ask a colleague to call me. Today, I received an e-mail from a client service representative from Business Link in London, which states:
	"I do not have any substantial information on the new funding scheme for SMEs, and will send you any information I receive from our research team. They will not be able to give me a response by Monday, but I will contact you on Tuesday...to update you."
	Two weeks after the Chancellor purportedly produced a package of measures to help smaller businesses, no one in the machinery of government can explain to a Member of Parliament how any small or medium business in my constituency can access any of that money. That is a disgrace. Businesses all over the country are bleeding. They are desperately short of credit and in need of help and support. It is therefore unacceptable that no one can explain what they should do.
	Then there is the whole issue of the scrapping of the learning and skills councils. Just as businesses in my constituency started to understand the Heart of England training and enterprise council, this Government scrapped it, just after they came to office, and set up the learning and skills councils. I have lost track of the number of times the LSC for Oxfordshire has changed—it has moved headquarters, its remit changed, and its regional operation has changed, so that at one point it included Milton Keynes and then it did not. At one point, people had to ring somewhere in Kent to discover what was going on, and then they had to ring Abingdon. That is a nightmare for small and medium businesses.
	People are now beginning to understand what the LSC does, so of course it is now being scrapped and we are to have a new skills funding agency. That will be dependent on parliamentary approval in the children, skills and learning Bill, so it will not come in next week. There will therefore be a hiatus, just at the time when people need to know where they can get help. The LSC will be in its death throes and key staff will doubtless be leaving to look for other work. Until the Bill is passed, we will not know where the skills funding agency will be based, how it will be organised and how people will be able to access it.
	The Gracious Speech provides nothing that will assist businesses in my constituency. For most of them, their main concern is getting access to credit. They find it frustrating that the banks, which have received very large amounts of money from the taxpayer, do not appear to be advancing credit, notwithstanding the exhortations of the Government. The Government do not seem to be taking any cognisance of the fact that credit in the economy has fallen close to zero, which is the lowest level in nearly 30 years. Not surprisingly, the CBI says that the number of firms reporting reduced and withdrawn lines of credit is going up every day. Instead of lending to businesses, the banks are cutting down their balance sheets. If everyone does that at the same time, the recession will clearly get deeper.
	I hope that the Government will reconsider a suggestion made by the Opposition. I find it objectionable that the Government's only mantra is to go around shouting that everyone else is doing nothing. It is the Government who are doing nothing apart from publishing press releases, because the schemes are not coming. They say that they will make credit available, but perhaps they ought to take notice of the national loan guarantee scheme that we have proposed, which would underwrite lending from the banks to British businesses for a commercial insurance fee, passed on by the banks. Such a scheme would properly protect the taxpayer. Banks would be able to use the scheme's guarantees to underwrite a significant proportion of any new loans to businesses, so they would not be reckless loans. In that way, we would ensure that the markets would start moving again.
	The Government must start to do something fairly speedily because it is important that small and medium-sized businesses get going at this time. The construction industry, of course, is an important part of that. As the Minister responsible for housing, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), is here, I want to take a couple of minutes to make some comments about housing.
	One of the Government's crazier ideas was the Weston Otmoor eco-town. I shall not detain the House on why it was and is one of the craziest ideas in God's creation to have such a development predominantly on a greenfield site and for it to be dependent on digging up pretty much the whole of Oxford railway station and every railway bridge around Oxford—that is neither here nor there. There is no debate about the fact that we need new social housing in this country. I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) had to say. One of the tragedies nowadays, as has been made clear by the chairman of the Centre for Social Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), is that working families on low incomes find it very difficult to access social housing. It is perverse that those who are on low incomes and in work are, if we are not careful, condemned for ever to the private rented sector, which means that stability is lost in our communities and in areas of our constituencies.
	We need new social housing, and so Cherwell district council has said that it is willing to support an eco-town proposal on the edge of Bicester if the local development framework is gone through to identify where it should be. That, I think, would be good news for Bicester. It would give some proper focus to a town that is in effect a new town, as it has grown very fast over the past 20 years. However, any such development will depend on the investment put into housing associations by the Housing Corporation. One cannot expect all the developments of the next 10 to 15 years to happen on section 106 agreements. Developers are simply not doing that. Wimpey lost 98 per cent. of its market cap in one year alone and most large-scale developments in my constituency have either ground to a halt or are moving at only a snail's pace. If the Government want us to proceed with initiatives such as eco-towns and eco-housing, they will have to be prepared to consider allowing the Housing Corporation to invest in social housing in constituencies such as mine in north Oxfordshire.
	Nothing in the Gracious Speech will do anything of real value for my constituents. It is all very well to talk about more apprenticeships, but as the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills said, apprentices need employers. Of course they do, and in my patch we are desperately trying to maintain employment, but it is dependent on small and medium-sized businesses and although the Prime Minister and the Chancellor talk a good talk about what they are supposedly doing for small business, in practice and in truth, when we ring up and ask, "How do my constituents access that help?", answer comes, "We do not know."

David Anderson: I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy). It is good to have an educator turned legislator. It is a shame that Scottish National party Members are not in the Chamber, as I am sure they would agree that my hon. Friend and the people of Glenrothes taught them a lesson on 6 November that they will be a long time forgetting.
	I pay tribute to my hon. Friend's predecessor, John MacDougall. The best tribute the House could give John MacDougall would be to put pressure on my Government to put right the scandal for people with pleural plaques and asbestos-related disease following the Law Lords deciding in their wisdom last October that those diseases could not be compensated for. Members of the House are working with Ministers to try to reverse that decision, and I hope that as a tribute to John MacDougall and the thousands of other people who have been illegally and criminally exposed to asbestos for many years the House will take that on board and support those who are trying to seek justice.
	I shall talk mainly about apprenticeships, but also about housing. Nearly 40 years ago, I was fortunate enough to be welcomed as an apprentice with the National Coal Board. At the time, it was seen as a good, high-quality apprenticeship and in April 1969 I was paid the grand sum of £7 and 6 shillings a week, and thought myself well paid. The apprenticeship was not just practical. It was not just about learning how to repair and install machinery; it was also very much an academic qualification. We studied mathematics and engineering part-time on day-release, and we had to study and understand mining legislation in particular.
	The vast majority of the rules governing mining are, thankfully, not just rules of conduct but were laid down by the House—sadly because of the serious incidents over many years, when people were killed in coal mines in a multitude of ways. The House took its responsibilities seriously and people who trained as craftsmen in the mining industry had the responsibility to learn the legislation and implement it. When I became a craftsman, the mines were much more mechanised than in earlier years, but sometimes that just meant there were different ways of killing people. If a person did not do their job properly, not only did they lose millions of tonnes of production, they could also ruin other people's lives.
	I was 19 years old when I had served my time. The apprenticeship was a badge of honour; it was important. It brought status, and part of it was that when we became older and had more experience we passed our knowledge on to the next person in line. The young kids coming through were aware that the knowledge was handed down from generation to generation. It was an important part of the culture for people to serve apprenticeships.
	Two years ago, I was asked to be a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department for Education and Skills, which became the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. I asked, "What's the agenda? What's the main idea that you're pushing?" It was the skills agenda. In the two years in which I worked in DFES with the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills and my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell), by and large, despite the brickbats that we normally throw at each other across the Chamber, the general view was that people in the Department were trying to do the right thing by improving skills and addressing the issues that we face in a global economy.
	Obviously, there was discussion between the parties on where we were going and what we were doing, but by and large, people accepted that the Minister and the Secretary of State acted in good faith, and engaged with and worked with people, particularly in the Committee stages of Bills. The Minister and the Secretary of State would appear before the Education and Skills Committee and ask, "Can we find a way to take things forward?" I am not suggesting that that is not mirrored in other Departments, but there was a genuine attempt to try to find consensus. Obviously, at the end of the day Members have different party backgrounds and we divide on tribal lines, but in general we tried to move forward.
	It was frustrating for me, as a PPS in that Department, to listen to the criticism of the apprenticeship schemes then in place, because Opposition Members talked about apprenticeships of the kind that I had had. They spoke of something almost like a guild, in which people would work for a time. They would work with a craftsman who had been there for a long time, and who had worked in the industry for many years. That totally ignored the fact that we are now in a very different world. I will be quite honest: I wish that we were still in a world in which we had that level of manufacturing, and the real, serious, heavy industry that produced work of that nature. However, the truth is that we are not in that world, because 20 years ago, the Conservative party had a deliberate policy of de-industrialisation, de-skilling and mass unemployment. It wanted to develop a low-skill, low-wage economy, and it did so very successfully.
	The Conservatives devalued the status of work done by people in the public service, such as ancillary workers and cleaners, who were taken out of the public sector work force. People who had been devoted to the national health service did not feel the same sympathy and passion when they belonged to the Joe Bloggs cleaning company; we see the results of that today. It is a different world now, and clearly we have to accept that.
	One of the criticisms made today is that public sector apprenticeships are not being created, and I accept that criticism. It is an absolute disgrace that the public sector has not filled the gap that was left by the demise of heavy industry. Again, we have to look at some of the reasons why it has not done so. For 20 years, the public sector in this country, including local government, higher education and the national health service, were starved of resources. Hundreds of thousands of people were outsourced; jobs were sub-contracted to companies that aimed for the lowest common denominator and did not want to know about training, skills or the long-term agenda. Work force numbers, budgets and terms and conditions were cut to make things leaner and more efficient. As a result, public sector bodies could not fill the gap that we want them to fill. Hopefully, we are accepting in this debate that the public sector must do much more, and do it much better.
	In the late 1980s, I left the mines. I was made redundant in 1989; when I left, I was given £20,000 in redundancy money. The global sum given to miners who were made redundant between the early 1980s and the early 1990s is £5 billion. I am talking about redundancy payments, and nothing else—not unemployment benefit or sickness benefit. If that money had been invested in keeping some mines open, or reinvested in skills, this country would be in a very different position today. I was fortunate, in a sense; through my involvement with the trade union movement—the Trades Union Congress and the National Union of Mineworkers—we got people access to Durham university. That gave people a chance to get skills, and to go back into education, if they had lost that chance earlier in life. That supported me and a few others.
	I was one of the lucky ones; I was in the know. We cannot rely on that in this day and age. We need to go far beyond that, but we cannot do so if the Government have the attitude that we should stand back. We cannot do it if they believe in laissez-faire—if their attitude is "Stand or fall", "Only the strong will survive," or "If you don't like it, get on your bike." Sorry, but we cannot go there again. I am glad to say that we are not doing that today.
	Sadly, like everyone else in the Chamber, I have constituents who are facing problems. Only last week, I visited Virgin Media in Team Valley in my constituency, where 113 people have been told that their jobs will have to go before next April. To its credit, the employer has engaged with those people at an early stage, and it has tried to find jobs for them in the rest of the system. More importantly, it has linked very quickly to the relevant agencies. Last week, I spoke to the Department for Work and Pensions, the local council and the regional development agency, which are working together with the employer to make sure that those people do not fall through the net. If they lose their job, they will try to find ways of giving them the skills to get another job, giving opportunities to people who may never have done a job interview or any training for years. The system is there to support them.
	Likewise, as was announced by the Secretary of State, we are dealing with the situation at Nissan which, like other car plants, faces serious problems. It is the most productive car plant in Europe, producing quality goods and showing the way forward for manufacturing in this country. Like everyone else, it faces a situation where it has to lay people off. It has engaged with Gateshead college, which supplies the automotive training industry in my constituency, and it has agreed a package so that when people are laid off they do not go and sign on the dole or sit at home—they will go to the training centre and update their skills. Those same people in the training centre are going out into the workplace, and are working round the clock seven days a week with people to provide on-the-job training. They want to update their skills and make their chances better. For me, that sort of thing is welcome.
	Twenty years ago this week, just down the river from Nissan, the last shipbuilding industry in Sunderland which, at one time, was the biggest shipbuilding town in the world, was closed down. A recording of what was said in interviews that day was released this week that said it all: when you take the heart out of something it dies, and the heart was ripped out of Sunderland when they shut the shipbuilding industry, with nothing to replace it. I urge everyone in the House to read "A mine of opportunities", the report produced last week by the Audit Commission which speaks about the key role that local councils play in regenerating coalfield communities. The key message is that the worst thing that happened was the lack of action in the 1980s and 1990s. There was a slow take-up of the fact that people were just left for a long time, which has led to long-term problems, including social problems and drug abuse. People are living in a welfare culture—something that they never wanted to happen. They were proud to go to work, but they have forgotten what it is like to get out of bed on a morning and go to work.

David Taylor: My hon. Friend referred to the car industry, and in North-West Leicestershire a good number of firms are car component manufacturers for companies such as Nissan and Toyota. In America, the big four car manufacturers are lobbying the case hard with President-elect Obama as well as President Bush for special support for the car industry as a central part of the economy. Indeed, Lord Mandelson has seemed to make similar noises here. Does my hon. Friend believe that that is the way ahead and, if so, how can support best be given by the Government to such central and core industries, off which many jobs hang in other parts of the country, not just in Sunderland, Derby or wherever?

David Anderson: My hon. Friend makes an apt point—that is exactly what I am talking about. We need input from people in different ways. The case for Nissan is different from the case for Honda or for Toyota. Right around the area, however, feeder factories may not be able to survive, unlike Nissan which, together with other big companies, can batten down the hatches. Companies that serve them, however, might not be able to do that. Part of our duty is to be the voice of people in Parliament, wherever we come from. If we believe that Ministers and the Chancellor are not doing their job or giving those people what they need, it is our job to come here, and bang on their doors and make sure that they know what we are saying.
	To give a classic example, last week, a local business man asked me to go and see him. He is a successful man who wants to be even more successful. He has the opportunity to develop service stations up and down the motorway system. About nine months ago, he had the chance of a 100 per cent. loan from his bank. He is putting things in place, but it has now told him that it is giving him only 70 per cent., despite the fact that the businesses and the property that he owns would more than compensate if the business went belly-up, as the bank could claw all that back. At the same time, the bank told him that his overdraft charge would go from 13 per cent. to 17 per cent. That is a case that I shall certainly take up, on his behalf and on behalf of others like him. We must say to our Government, "You must put that right."
	Finally, I turn to the subject of housing. I am glad that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright) is on the Front Bench. The hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) spoke about social housing and a number of hon. Members who were present agreed in principle with what she said, although we may have party political differences on the matter. There is a need for social housing, but there is also a great opportunity to do what our parents and grandparents did in the 1950s by regenerating areas and building quality social housing, not rubbish like the housing that was built in the 1960s.
	We must build social housing that people want to live in and make homes in. We should be clear that that housing is there for ever for people who cannot afford to buy their houses. If people want to buy their houses, they should buy on the open market. Let us build social housing and use the rents over the next 50 or 100 years, whatever it takes, to pay back the money put into them. It is a long-term investment that will provide work—

Kelvin Hopkins: I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and I strongly agree with every word that he is saying. I am sure that his town is similar to mine, where tens of thousands of houses were built in 1930s. Does he agree that it was construction that helped bring Britain out of the 1930s recession and that we should do that again?

David Anderson: My hon. Friend is right. That would be a new deal in the same sense as in the States in the 1930s, where public money was invested not just to get people through hard times, which is obviously the right thing to do, but to leave a legacy that lasts and meets a need. It is genuinely a win-win situation, as was said earlier by an Opposition Member. We should acknowledge that across the House and work together to take it forward. It would drive the economy, not just in construction—every house that was built would need to be fitted out with carpets, beds, settees and so on. The work is there for us to get stuck into, and I am keen to see that going forward. I hope that the Minister will give us some support in that respect.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes said that doing nothing was not an option for the Opposition. I believe that it is an option and that they should stick to it. They are good at it and they should do it for the rest of time, so that the people of this country refuse to elect them ever again.

Edward Garnier: May I, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) and the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson), congratulate the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy), who made his maiden speech this evening? It is a privilege, as he accepted, to be elected to the House, and I congratulate him on his election.
	I join the hon. Gentleman in his praise for his predecessor, John MacDougall, whom I proudly claim to have been a friend of mine. We were colleagues on the Anglo-Netherlands all-party group. He was the chairman and I was the treasurer. We travelled to Holland and we met delegations from the Dutch Parliament here on a number of occasions over the past few years. I mourn with the hon. Gentleman and his constituents the loss of John MacDougall. He was a great man and a great servant of his constituency. The hon. Gentleman quite properly spoke of him this evening and I am delighted that he did so.
	The hon. Gentleman said that he wanted to change the name of his constituency to Glenrothes County, I think. Perhaps I misunderstood him, in which case the remark that I am about to make will be even more laboured than the one I intended. Glen Roy might be the better name for his constituency, if the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr. Kennedy) would allow him to use the name of a place in his constituency near Roy Bridge, near Spean Bridge in north-west Scotland. I congratulate the hon. Member for Glenrothes and wish him well. I trust that his remarks about the Prime Minister propel him or project him into the place where he no doubt wishes to be. It was a fine speech and I look forward to hearing more from him.
	I return to the Queen's Speech. Although I shall concentrate on housing, I shall briefly mention another aspect that interests me, criminal justice policy. I want to discuss the way in which the Government are pushing their policy of building titan prisons—the large human warehouses that will incarcerate upwards of 2,500 inmates. They propose to build three of these, at the moment, in order to relieve prison overcrowding—a problem that they created and have made worse. Since they came to office in 1997, the prison population has risen from about 61,000 to some 83,500, and they have introduced a number of panic, reactive measures in order, as they see it, to deal with and mitigate the problems caused by prison overcrowding. Not one of them has worked. Since they introduced early release from custody on licence, far from the prison population going down, it has gone up. They have now come up with this hare-brained scheme to introduce titan prisons in Britain, which has been criticised right across the globe—in the United States and in Europe.
	Today, Professor Bryan Stevenson of New York university gave a lecture in which he deprecated the Government's policy of introducing titan prisons and urged this country to learn the lessons of what has gone wrong in the United States. The US has huge prisons containing not just 2,500 but many thousands of prisoners, and they are very dangerous places. One need only look to today's experience at Her Majesty's young offender institution, in Aylesbury. It houses only 435 young men, yet there was an incident there today that the Ministry of Justice described as the result of "concerted indiscipline". That is probably new Labour-speak for "deep trouble". I dare say that not all 435 inmates were responsible for the concerted indiscipline, but it does not take much to spark trouble in a prison, and crowding people into big prisons and simply controlling the perimeter is asking for trouble. I urge the Government to think very carefully in this debate about what they do to deal with our overcrowded prisons.
	I intervened on the Secretary of State earlier to urge him to do rather more about education in prisons. Although he said that there have been improvements, he was candid enough to accept that there is a lot more to do. That, if I may say so, is the understatement of the evening. The current state of the management of the education system in our prisons is wholly inadequate not because the prison staff are not doing their best—they are—but because prisoners are "churned" from prison to prison to prison. They barely get on to a course when they have to move. They barely get into that new prison when they are moved again, and their educational records, curriculum vitae and medical records—their drug, health and rehabilitation records—follow behind, probably two or three prisons after the individual prisoner. We are building in and reinforcing failure, and it is high time that the Government got beyond the departmental silos, so that adult education Ministers speak to Ministry of Justice Ministers and we have a sensible way of educating prisoners.
	We should bear it in mind that many prisoners go into prison unable to read and write, and come out unable to read and write. One has to have a reading age of about 14 in order to get a job of any description nowadays in this country. Those without such a reading age cannot read the safety notices in factories or the instruction leaflets that machinists are required to get their heads round. We continue to allow a system that breeds lack of achievement and an inability to get a job, and which is ultimately responsible for the high reoffending rates that we see in the adult cohort, but—even worse—in the teenage cohort, as well. The reoffending rate among those under 18 is in the high 80s; among those of between 18 and 21, it is in the mid 70s. The reoffending rate among those over 21 leaving custody is about 66 per cent. within two years. We should not be proud of those figures; apart from anything else, they represent a total waste of public money. It costs £50,000 a year to keep each adult prisoner, and if they reoffend within two years, that is a waste of public money. The Government need to apply themselves rather more vigorously to that issue.

David Taylor: A few weeks ago, I was critical of the lack of meaningful activities in many adult prisons. I said that in some respects the prisons were Dickensian and that the activities that there were would have been recognised by Dickens's Magwitch. As a magistrate, I have visited the young offenders centre in Glen Parva, which is in the hon. and learned Gentleman's constituency. Do the criticisms that he rightly levels against the education and training situation in prisons apply a fortiori in respect of the younger prisoners, who do not necessarily lack skills for work, but lack skills for life and basic education—reading, writing and so on?

Edward Garnier: The hon. Gentleman is right; the issue applies across the piece. Education, in its widest sense, is not being given in the secure estate. My constituents employed at Glen Parva work their socks off in very difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances. Not so long ago, a young man committed suicide there by setting fire to his mattress. He died from the burns. He put in danger not only his own life, but those of the officers who tried to get in to rescue him. Sadly, they were unable to save his life.
	I do not wish to make tiresome party political points, because that is tedious. However, we are looking at a situation in which the lives of 83,500 people are being wasted. They have committed crimes, and many of them need to go to prison to keep us safe and so that they learn to lead more responsible lives. However, we miss an opportunity in incarcerating people in huge numbers and doing little with them once they are inside. Whether those people are youngsters or adults, the Government have a duty to the public to repair them—and, of course, to look after the victims of their crimes.

Andrew Stunell: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman accept that there are prisoners who are unnecessarily retained in detention because the training courses that are a condition of their release are not available? That is another aspect that is feeding the spiral that he has been describing.

Edward Garnier: That is not a controversial thing to say. Unfortunately, there have been cases at the High Court in which those on indeterminate sentences for public protection have been unable to satisfy the licensing or parole authorities that they are safe for release, because they cannot get on to the courses that, if completed by them, might give some indication of their fitness for release.

Daniel Kawczynski: I recently spent a day at Shrewsbury prison, which is officially the most overcrowded prison in England. I saw the extraordinary work that the governor, Mr. Hendry, is doing to rehabilitate prisoners there. However, the sheer numbers at the prison make rehabilitation very difficult.

Edward Garnier: I congratulate my hon. Friend on visiting the prison in his constituency. I always urge hon. Members to visit the prisons in their constituency—or, if there is none, the one nearest it. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson) is a frequent visitor to Reading prison— [Interruption.] I am in danger of taking myself too seriously. However, it is important that constituency Members visit prisons in their own constituencies; otherwise, the issue becomes a closed book and we invent public policies on criminal justice that are wholly inept and incapable of dealing with the problems that we face. I have two prisons in my constituency. I want to solve the problems I have identified for the benefit of my constituents—as taxpayers, as victims of crime, and as human beings who want the condition of people to be improved, not depressed by how we conduct this aspect of public policy.
	I want to turn to housing—in particular, an aspect that was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury. I can see that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), is really looking forward to what I have to say, because he is a keen student of my criticism of how the Government have handled the vexed and vexing subject of eco-towns. I have in my constituency a site that has been earmarked to some extent by the Government, but certainly by the Co-operative Wholesale Society, for the building of a new town of approximately 40,000 residents—about twice the size of Market Harborough, the biggest town in my constituency. In order to achieve this, the CWS, which owns approximately 5,000 acres of prime farmland in my constituency, wishes to convert that farmland into an eco-town. "Eco-town" sounds so much more attractive than "new town", but the fact is that the CWS would like to make a lot more money out of farming houses than it does out of farming crops. As a capitalist, I fully understand that it is entitled to make the best that it can out of its assets in order to return the money, if not to its shareholders, at least to its members. I know that Members of this House are members of the CWS and also members of its political branch, which I appreciate is a different organisation legally, although they are closely related.
	In the city of Leicester and county of Leicestershire, there are about 10,000 empty dwellings, yet the Government seem backward in coming forward in encouraging the city council—most of the empty dwellings are in the city—to repair them to make them habitable. I am sure that financial and other instruments could be used to make it easier for private and public sector landlords in the city to bring those dwellings back into habitation. Equally, I am sure that the district councils that surround the city could be encouraged to bring back into habitation the lesser number of unused dwellings in the county. It is a waste of those 10,000 dwellings when there are, I am sure, plenty of people across the county and in the city who would like to go and live in them, particularly if they could be rented or bought at prices that they could afford. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be happening, and the CWS is crashing on like a bull in a china shop, demanding of the people in my constituency and that of my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan), that it should be entitled to build this vast new town all over a piece of agricultural scenery.
	Let me give an idea of the problem that we are up against. As I have said before—possibly in a debate responded to by the Under-Secretary—extracting facts out of the CWS is rather like extracting teeth. It is very reluctant to tell us precisely what it wants to do. I thought that I might get something out of it when, during the course of the summer, it produced a document—its piece of propaganda, or sales sheet—on its latest design for this town of 40,000 people. It described its vision in this way:
	"The flexibility of the eco-town enables the desensification of residential plots that occur at an individual level, with the opportunity to create the value (rather than incur the cost) that this implies."
	That is total balderdash. It means nothing. It is sales-speak and it will not get to grips with the real issue that concerns my constituents—the wholly inappropriate siting of a new town of 40,000 people in the middle of rural Leicestershire, which will have the following adverse consequences. It will suck the regeneration budget out of the city of Leicester, and I know that the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) and the hon. Member for Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby), who are closest to my constituency, are concerned about that, and it will destroy the chance to give new life to the retail centre in Oadby, the part of my constituency closest to the city. Oadby lies directly between the new town and the city of Leicester. This town of 40,000 will knock out two perfectly good commercial centres: Oadby and the city of Leicester, as well as causing a massive drain of development money from those centres into the new town.
	The new town will also cause the most appalling problems for transport infrastructure. If it goes through, the 40,000 people who will live there will need public transport and access to private vehicles, but both public and private vehicles need something to drive on. At the moment, the roads are already crowded, particularly during rush hour. The Co-op says, "Don't worry. Nobody will move out of this new town. They will all be so excited about living there that they will want to stay there. Indeed, all the jobs that we will create will encourage them to stay there." That is a nice thought, but I do not think that it will happen. The Co-op is also going to ensure that there is only one car park space for every two houses. That is wholly unrealistic, and it will cause trouble.
	The Co-op hopes to persuade the Government to give it permission to push on with its ludicrous plan on the basis that it will build a tramway between the site of the eco-town and the city centre of Leicester. It has not been candid enough to tell us what the precise cost of that will be. Calculations vary between £1 million and £2 million per inch of tramway—that is an awful lot of money. I am not sure whether the Government will come up with the money to make the difference between the few hundreds of thousands of pounds that the Co-op says that it is prepared to give and the total cost. We will end up with a transport mess.
	Of that 40,000 population, how will the adults who have to work get out of that new town to get to the main centres of business in the east midlands where jobs are to be found? Those 12,000 jobs will not arrive in this new eco-town just because the Co-op says it wants them. There will be massive overcrowding on the already overcrowded road system. It is 30 to 45 minutes from the site of the eco-town to the site of the most vibrant economic and job-creating development in Leicestershire by junction 21 of the M1, just south of the constituency of the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor), which is right on the boundary of the junction with the M69 and the M21. Only 300 jobs a year have been created in that area. On those figures, it will take about 50 years to create the new jobs needed in Pennbury; we are going to have to wait an awfully long time for those jobs.
	I am concerned that the Government and the Co-op have been very unclear about the public sector funding needed to bridge the gap between what the Co-op says it will put in—in so far as it has given us any detail—and what will have to come from local and central Government. The section 106 agreements simply cannot be written, because we do not know what the Co-op will provide or what central and local government will be required to provide. We need detail if we are to engage sensibly and rationally with the bullying, which is what I call it, that we have seen from the Co-op.
	Finally, I should like the Minister to give some indications in respect of the judicial review that has been granted in relation to the site at Middle Quinton in Warwickshire, just south of Stratford-on-Avon. In my area, the campaign against the Stoughton Co-op eco-town, or CASCET, is chaired by county councillor Dr. Kevin Feltham, who has been waging a highly effective and rational campaign against the Co-op and its madcap scheme. CASCET has sent a letter of formal support to the court in relation to the Middle Quinton review. Mr. Justice Collins granted that judicial review in September last year and I believe that the Government have granted a six-week extension, from February 2009, for responses to the latest consultation on the eco-town at Middle Quinton. That extension should apply to all the other applicant sites currently under discussion. If it does not apply to them all, let me urge the Minister to ensure that it should at least apply to the Co-op site in my constituency.
	I apologise for speaking for so long, but in the Co-op application for a so-called eco-town—the misuse of language is just appalling, as one sees from the propaganda piece that I quoted a moment ago—the poverty of the language reflects the poverty of the case. None the less, my constituents' concern grows by the day, as the Government and the Co-op fail to understand the terrible threat that we face. I am grateful to the new Minister for Housing, who has agreed to meet me and my neighbouring parliamentarians at her Department, I believe on 20 January. I hope that we can persuade her that the scheme proposed by the Co-op is not just silly, but highly damaging and will destroy the economy and the environment of Leicester and Leicestershire. When the Minister who is here responds to this debate, I urge him not simply to say, "I'm thinking about it and we'll do something next week," or the week after that, but to come up with some firm proposals that would put the Co-op back in its box.

Charles Kennedy: It is a real pleasure to be the first fellow Scot in this debate to congratulate the new hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) on his maiden speech, following his probably seminal victory—it was certainly a seminal by-election—of some time ago. Like everybody else in the House, I found his engaging contribution excellent and stimulating. The sense of balance in his temperament, which he brought to bear in the by-election, was with him in this debate and will be with him in the House generally.
	I liked the hon. Gentleman's self-deprecating description of himself in the first few days here as "a lost soul around the parliamentary estate." Let us cast our minds back to those fevered times over the summer recess in the parliamentary Labour party. Had the result of the by-election been different, as it was widely anticipated at the outset, the lost soul wandering around the parliamentary estate might well have been the gentleman who is now his neighbouring constituency MP, the Prime Minister himself. There was a lot riding on that by-election, and it was a famous victory for the hon. Gentleman personally and for his party.
	In congratulating the hon. Gentleman, as one Scot to another, let me say that one thing about the by-election that pleased me. The debate during the campaign and the outcome of the by-election, as well as his presence here this evening, as the new MP, and the presence of those of us from other political parties in Scottish and UK politics, demonstrate that one can certainly be a 100 per cent. nationalistic Scot without having to be a political nationalist. The voters of Glenrothes well understood that distinction and voted accordingly.
	As has been quite widely remarked, this Queen's Speech is fairly thin in content, but I am one of those who have no great argument with that either philosophically or practically. I think that Governments and Oppositions consistently want to do too much and to interfere too much, so a Queen's Speech that does a little less is to be welcomed on principle alone.
	Like others, I take the view that the Queen's Speech is lighter in content not least because of the general election calculations. This Parliament's legislative programme may have to be foreshortened if the Prime Minister decides at some point in the next calendar year that he can risk an early, or earlier than is absolutely necessary, general election. Who knows what will happen? It is idle speculation.
	I am thoroughly of the view—and it is a view that the former Labour Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) expressed quite recently—that when one looks at the great advantage that is supposed to accrue to incumbent Prime Ministers from choosing the dates of general elections, one needs to remember that the history books tend to get written by the winners, so it is a great advantage when the incumbent benefits from it. It was not a great advantage for James Callaghan, for example, and it has not so far proved to be a great advantage for the present incumbent. If I were in his shoes, I would say that there will be no general election next year and that the Parliament will go through to the first week in May 2010 to coincide with the already scheduled local elections. Irrespective of the intervening consequences, that would settle the issue—at least in that respect—once and for all, so politics could conduct itself accordingly and much of the second half of the Parliament would not be so distracted by idle talk and idle general election speculation.
	The Queen's Speech is lighter in content, but given the overwhelming financial and economic circumstances, which will determine the political content of this Parliament, I want to deal with it to a greater extent than any other time since my maiden speech 25 years ago by focusing on employment issues. When I was first elected 25 years ago, unemployment in my constituency was absolutely through the roof as a result of closures. For some streets and communities, adult male long-term unemployment was at more than 50 per cent—so thank God those days are behind us, we hope. What is back in focus, however, is the looming prospect—indeed, we are seeing it already right across the country—of very significant job losses becoming the order of the day once again. A big challenge for the Government, not just in respect of the Queen's Speech but for political conduct more generally, is how they respond to and cope with that prospect.
	Let me begin by referring to an unemployment issue that has arisen in my own constituency. I make no apology for the fact that the number of jobs is very small or that the size of the community is very small, because everything is relative. The number of jobs available for this size of community is a highly significant issue. Like so many in my area, this community is remote, rural and heavily dependent on long-term employment prospects, some of which have been there for many decades. I am referring to the future of the silica sand mine in Lochaline in the Morvern peninsula in the Lochaber part of my constituency.
	Lochaline has a population of 202 and we are talking about 11 full-time jobs, which Tarmac is likely to axe immediately before Christmas. The mine has a 60-year history in the community and its products have been associated throughout that time with many household names on both the national and international markets. A great deal of work is under way at all levels—in the community, at Highlands and Islands Enterprise, in my representations to Tarmac, and in the Scottish Executive in Edinburgh—and it would be assist if those efforts were reinforced by the Scotland Office and other Ministers making appropriate supportive noises. A further meeting in Fort William is scheduled for next Monday, and a report is due back from Highlands and Islands Enterprise on the current prospects for maintaining the mine. Given the company's premature announcement, which had scant regard for consultation or the sensitivity or interests of the community, we are looking for a stay of execution, a more careful and sensible consideration of the feedback—which will have been achieved in a short time scale, which is currently less than two weeks—and further discussion into the new year. Any help from the Government at a UK or Scotland Office level would be much appreciated.

Edward Timpson: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the consultation and need for a stay of execution that he describes should also apply to the 90 offices of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs that are earmarked for closure by the Treasury? Does he also agree that those jobs on the front line of public services should be kept at a time when experienced and dedicated local staff are required for local services, including in my constituency of Crewe and Nantwich?

Charles Kennedy: I thank the hon. Gentleman, and I congratulate him on his by-election victory of not that long ago. I must give credit where credit is due. With regard to the closures to which he refers, one was scheduled in another part of my constituency, Ullapool, but the Government have backed off. However, the alternative offices were, respectively, Wick, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), and one of the two centres in Inverness, in the constituency of my other neighbouring parliamentary colleague, so it would have been ridiculous to reduce the presence in Ullapool. I welcome that fact.
	A lot of work that was under way, and in the pipeline at a governmental level, has now been overtaken by economic events. The example cited by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr. Timpson) is one. The budget for Highlands and Islands Enterprise, although it comes within the purview of the Scottish Executive, has been cut by £50 million, and its purpose is to provide help in extremis. The budget decision was taken some time ago, but the financial situation has plummeted in the meantime, so some mechanisms of state support have been constrained just when they are needed. I therefore wish the hon. Gentleman luck with his ongoing campaign. The Government should listen to those in Crewe and Nantwich and constituencies across the country, where, sadly, such state support will be needed by citizens who already find themselves encountering hard economic circumstances. Alas, as we all know, they are liable to encounter even more of the same as 2009 progresses. I hope that the Government can take steps to assist with the problems of unemployment in Lochaline and in the wider community of Morvern.
	On the Queen's Speech as a whole and employment prospects, transport and infrastructure considerations are important for the entire economy, but for an area as peripheral and remote from markets as the highlands and islands of Scotland, such considerations, as well as the cost of fuel, are vital. I welcomed some of the Chancellor's recent announcements in the pre-Budget statement—it has been renamed so many times that the correct nomenclature is difficult to remember—running in tandem with the Queen's Speech. However, it must be said that the impact on jobs in the highlands of Scotland of the continuing difficulties generated by fuel prices and the way in which the Government have set about their revenue take remains crippling.
	I have mentioned one remote community, Lochaline, but another such community is Applecross, on the west coast of Ross-shire. The weekend before last, I was fortunate enough to be there and to observe that, thanks to tremendous efforts in that small and isolated community, the local petrol pumps had just been reopened as a result of the activities of the community and the Applecross community company. The company was able to raise enough funds to ensure that, when people needed to fill their tanks, they need not face—would you believe?—a 40-mile round trip to and from what were the nearest petrol pumps, in the metropolis known as Lochcarron, over the Bealach na Ba. If nothing has done so already, the mention of those place names will guarantee me an envelope from the  Hansard reporters at the end of my speech!
	However, it is not just access to fuel that is vital to a community of that kind. The cost is such that it inhibits everything else to do with creating jobs and maintaining them. People face longer journeys and higher prices, along with few if any alternatives. The Government must bear it in mind that power companies in this country have received £9 billion from the carbon emission trading scheme that they have not passed on to domestic energy consumers: something should be done about that before Christmas. Meanwhile, the Government are continuing to rake a considerable amount into the national Exchequer through the fuel costs that people are paying for their transport. All those factors have a massive inhibiting effect on the employment prospects of areas such as mine.
	The third and final issue that I wish to raise is related to employment, although it falls within the housing field, and the United Kingdom housing field. I refer to the level of housing debt. Because it remains a Treasury matter, Members of Parliament in the Highland council area have been lobbying the Treasury for some time on the extent of the council's existing overhang in terms of housing debt.
	The Treasury keeps citing the golden rule when it comes to trying to wipe out debt. For reasons that are well understood, the Government flaunted the golden rule in the context of the banking community; if they could do something similar in the context of a local authority such as Highland council, we might see the attainment of more Government objectives that are widely shared across the political spectrum.
	The Government could invest in energy efficiency—in home insulation, for instance. They could bring about a welcome raising of social standards, and improve people's general welfare. However, a potential triple gain in the form of trades and skills—which are good for employment, overall energy policy and improved living standards—is being threatened. The lack of employment opportunities is all the worse at a time when we are losing jobs and will continue to lose jobs, but I have identified an affordable and efficient way in which the Government could generate growth in an area such as mine.
	There is another way of doing that—partly through the Scottish Executive, but also through the Chancellor's welcome proposal in the pre-Budget report to front-load money over two years. Let me make a particular plea. In the context of geography and distance, the state of a main artery such as the A82, particularly between Glasgow and Fort William, remains an appalling indictment of present-day communications in a modern, developed country such as ours. Therefore, given that road's strategic UK importance for tourism and for shipping products generated locally south and out to European markets, any encouragement that the Scotland Office can give would be welcome.
	Over the coming year, we will face a very hard time indeed in our employment prospects and the social impact they will have. Let us hope that, beyond the fairly thin content of this Queen's Speech, there is action that the Government can take.

David Simpson: I realise that many of the matters that we might address in this debate have been devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly, but there are some points I would like to raise. In debating the matters before us, we could do worse than go all the way back to a previous Queen's Speech, when Her Majesty said:
	"A stable economy is the foundation of a fair and prosperous society. My Government will continue to maintain low inflation, sound public finances and high employment."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 15 November 2006; Vol. 687, c. 1.]
	I will be generous to Labour Members by ignoring the obvious temptation to say that a stable economy is one that is not beset by boom and bust. However, although I will resist that temptation, I will point out that economic stability is foundational to almost everything else a Government might seek to do.
	That brings me on to the issues of employment and skills. I spent almost 30 years building up my own company before I entered full-time politics—and I suppose there are those in Northern Ireland who would say that I would have been safer if I had stayed in business and not gone into politics, but we shall not elaborate on that. I know what it is to struggle and to work long, hard and unsocial hours to make a business a success. It is a bit like being an MP; the roles have a lot in common.
	I started the company when I was a young man of 19. I was what one would call wet behind the ears, and I admit there were times when others in the business world took advantage of me and my family within that business because of my lack of experience. That was 30-odd years ago in Northern Ireland, and things were different there then. We did not have innovations such as training to be a business individual or entrepreneur. It was difficult, because things were hard in Northern Ireland, as all Members will know.
	I noted what the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) said about funding for science education. He is not in the Chamber at the moment, but I agree with what he said. More money needs to be invested in such skills; I will elaborate on that later.
	Just last week, I met local business people in the Province, including representatives of a company that employs more than 40,000 people worldwide and has annual sales of about £5 billion. Many of their concerns are very similar to what I have encountered in a much smaller measure and are shared by business and employers across the United Kingdom. I am thinking, for example, of the sheer number of people who present themselves as potential employees without having even the most basic skills.
	The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) mentioned science funding. A large pharmaceutical company called Almac, which is based in my constituency, is considering developing a new site to employ some 300 to 400 young people—technicians and young scientists. In my recent meeting with the company, I discovered that it honestly does not know where it is going to get those people from, unless it looks to eastern Europe or the United States. We need to support and fund science courses in order to fill the gaps that exist across the whole of the United Kingdom in this area.
	Education must be tailored to the needs of the workplace. There is absolutely no point in someone's going to university, getting an honours degree in karaoke singing or whatever, and then looking to get a job in the real world. Such an approach does not and cannot work, and those people will end up out of work. I hope that the proposed education and skills Bill and apprenticeship Bill will prove to be a step in the right direction—we shall wait and see. Apprenticeships should be embedded in the workplace and not left solely to the classroom.
	This is not only about the skills of the prospective individual member of staff; it is about the skills of the company itself. Research and development uptake needs to be emphasised and prioritised. I have been struck by the absence of any recent mention of trade unions by those on the Government Benches and by the fact that trade unions were not mentioned in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech. We are told on a daily basis that the country faces a global economic crisis and that every part of the world is suffering because of what began in the USA. If that really is the case, and if it is true that the UK is facing into the same wind and storm as the rest of the world, surely we should seek to give ourselves every possible advantage over the rest of the world. In such circumstances, do trade union leaders not have an important role to assume?
	My own constituency recently faced the possible loss of 120 jobs as a result of the threatened closure of the local offices of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. I lobbied the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), when she was Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and her successor, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Mr. Timms), and I am pleased to say that those jobs have been saved. One of the key elements in that was the very positive campaigning on the part of the unions, and I want to commend them for their efforts in securing those jobs and ensuring that those 120 homes will be much happier over the Christmas period than they would have been otherwise. But it is not always like that.
	As I have said, if what the Government tell us about the economic crisis is correct, we should give ourselves every possible advantage and that surely means that at the very highest level there must be a coming together of government, employers and trade unionists to agree that the first priority is to get through the current situation successfully. That is especially so given the many billions of pounds that the Government have thrown at the problem.
	The Chancellor has recently outlined proposals in relation to tax and VAT that he is going to use as a temporary measure, and he has told us that it may well be the case that we shall all pay a bit more down the line. Well, if that is to be the case and if there is to be a bit of additional financial relief over the next couple of years, should not that be matched by trade union leaders making it clear that for the same period of time they will exercise caution in wage demands? If on the one hand the Chancellor is trying to ease the pressure on the economy, employers and jobs by taking the action he took, would the potential benefits not be increased by a reciprocal move by the unions? Would that not greatly assist business needs and be a positive contribution to employment prospects over coming months? After all, with unemployment at almost the 2 million mark and projected to rise as high as 3 million, I would imagine that trade unions would want to see their members remain in jobs rather than end up on the scrapheap.
	A few moments ago, I used the phrase "business needs". In looking at the Government's programme as outlined in Her Majesty's Speech, I have to say that I am not convinced that business needs will necessarily be best served over the coming period. There are some positives, that is true. A female should be paid the same wage for doing the same job as a male. The gender pay gap needs to be closed and I hope that the equality proposals will achieve that end. But there are other measures that I fear will not have a positive effect. For example, the plan to further extend the right to request flexible working is fraught with negative potential. The fact of the matter is that while it will only be right to make the request, that right will come with a moral pressure on many small businesses. To me, it is simply not in the business needs to introduce this at this time.
	Let us think, too, of the opportunities missed. While on the one hand the Government are intent on pushing through the flexible working proposals, they have failed to address the ongoing bureaucracy and regulation industry that has cost the country many billions of pounds over recent years—the very money that could have contributed to the Chancellor's financial stimulus package.
	We know that as recently as last year the Government said that they would deliver 3 million new homes by 2020. Speaking in July 2007, the Prime Minister said:
	"it is right, in the interests of good and open government and public debate, that each year the Prime Minister make a summer statement to the House so that initial thinking, previously private, can be the subject of widespread and informed public debate. Putting affordable housing within the reach of not just the few but the many is vital both to meeting individual aspirations and to securing a better future for our country".—[ Official Report, 11 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 1449.]
	He also said that the annual target would be raised from 200,000 to 240,000 new homes in England from 2016.
	At the time,  The Independent newspaper ran a headline that read "Brown's plans to build three million new homes 'will bankrupt social housing sector in five years'." The story quoted the National Housing Federation, which claimed that the Government's financial predictions were based on an assumption that housing associations would fund the work by taking out huge loans that, in fact, they would be unable to afford.
	What became of those plans? How close are the Government to fulfilling that pledge? Of course, it could be argued that the crisis in social housing—for it was and is a crisis—was inherited by the Prime Minister from his predecessor, who saw the number of social houses built per year fall to just over 17,000. Be that as it may, the Prime Minister was still the Chancellor at the time and he is now the man in the hot seat. I remain to be convinced that the need for social and affordable housing will be met by any of the measures outlined by Her Majesty.
	All in all, many people—whether they are members of the business community or in jobs that are at risk, are unemployed or homeless, or are young couples just starting out in life together—will feel short changed. I would be hard pressed to argue that they were unjustified for feeling that way.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. There are 44 minutes left before the wind-ups will begin and five hon. Members seek to occupy that time. Perhaps they will take a hint from that.

Tobias Ellwood: It is an honour to participate in this important debate. It is the usual debate that we have following the Queen's Speech, but we are certainly in unusual times. The content of the speech and the ideas and the vision displayed by the Government are under scrutiny and are all the more relevant as the scale of the recession becomes apparent.
	Of course, this is the second opportunity that the Government have had to lay out their store following the pre-Budget statement, which was a chance to map the course that would be taken to weather the unsettled phase of this economic cycle. It has now become apparent that this is less about economic cycles and more about political cycles. As the dust settles, we see that Labour has provided £20 billion of savings but £40 billion of taxes. The cut in VAT is being seen and treated as a gimmick and there is no common sense in increasing taxes through national insurance at the very time when businesses want a reduction in taxes.
	Rumour has it that the Chancellor will be back at the Dispatch Box in the not too distant future with another idea and will probably have to borrow more money, too. He will no doubt repeat the claim that the whole crisis started in the United States with the sub-prime market, but it was this Government who stripped the Bank of England of its historic ability to ensure that banking credit was kept within reasonable limits, this Government who allowed banks to offer massive loans and mortgages to those who could not afford them, and, of course, this Government who spent so much that they have no other choice than to borrow more money now. The result is an unsustainable debt-fuelled boom, followed by one of the biggest busts in history. I understand that the UK is now forecast to have the worst recession of all the G8 countries.
	I mentioned in an intervention the other claim that the Prime Minister is keen to put forward, which is that other countries are copying the approach of weathering the recession with recapitalisation of the banks. That part is true, but whereas the £37 billion of taxpayers' money that the Government have lent to the banks has been lent at an annual coupon of 12 per cent., that figure was about 5 per cent. in Germany or the United States. At the same time, the Government are asking banks not only to hand those loans on to small businesses but to sort out their own debts. They cannot do both, and that is why the money is stuck and why it is not getting down to the small businesses.
	We have touched a lot on employment, so it would be good to take stock after the monologue we heard from the Secretary of State. We would be forgiven for thinking that things were going well, but 5 million people are still on work benefits. Unemployment is rising and is at its highest for 11 years.
	 The debate stood adjourned (Standing Order No. 9(3)).
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 15),
	That at this day's sitting, proceedings on the Queen's Speech (Motion for an Address) may be proceeded with, though opposed, until 11 o'clock.— ( Ian Lucas.)
	 Question agreed to.
	 Debate accordingly resumed.
	 Question again proposed

Tobias Ellwood: Two in three of all jobs created are in the public sector, according to the  Financial Times today. Four in five jobs created by the Government have been given to migrant workers.
	We had a brief discussion about the importance of level 3 apprenticeships. The number is down and has been falling for the last seven years, yet those apprenticeships are critical in supporting businesses' employment and training needs. The Government are not taking us in the right direction.
	More important is the worrying cultural change and the attitude of today's youth towards work. A small but increasing number of people are growing up to believe that it is acceptable to live off the state. The economic and social significance of that is extremely serious. With limited ambitions, people do not gain educational qualifications to the same standard, skills are not obtained and the capability of the work force is diminished. If there is one failure that hangs round the neck of the new Labour project, it is that it has overseen a generation's declining aspiration in favour of the expectation of state support. It has never been easier for Britons to be sponsored by Government to do nothing. That is a sad indictment of where we are today. It not only costs the state more in increased handouts, but there is a loss of potential income tax, which means less money for the Government to inject in the economy.
	An area of the economy that is suffering, and has not been mentioned yet, is tourism. It is Britain's fifth biggest industry and of huge importance. It generates revenue of about £90 billion a year and is considered the hidden giant of our economy. Tourism is twice the size of the IT sector and four times the size of the agricultural sector, yet it is rarely mentioned. It is responsible for one in four of the new jobs created in the UK, and with 30 million visitors to the UK every year we are the sixth most popular country in international tourist tables—something of which we can be very proud indeed.
	The recession is not just affecting businesses through the banking crisis, but also because fewer people are choosing to holiday and to travel from abroad to seek work in the service industries. Labour is ignoring the problems of the tourism industry. When I asked the Minister with responsibility for tourism when she last had conversations with her counterparts in the Departments for Transport and for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, and indeed the Treasury, I found that such meetings never happen. No one in the Government is looking after tourism from the Government perspective.
	To make matters worse, a complicated and confusing structure is compounded by devolution. Visit Scotland does its own thing, as do Visit Wales and Visit England. Regional development agencies disperse responsibility for tourism around nine regions, to the point that in Boston, Massachusetts there are separate offices for six RDAs representing different corners of Britain, all trying to attract people to the UK. How mad is that? There is overlap that needs to be addressed, but it has not been done because no one in the Government is taking responsibility.
	Another example of poor co-ordination is between the Home Office and the tourism industry. Visa costs have jumped by 130 per cent. according to the Tourism Alliance, which has led to a loss of about £160 million a year. That is bad enough, but if we look at who is coming to Britain, we see that although there were 100,000 applications for British visas from China last year, France and Germany receive 500,000 tourists from China every year. That is simply because the visa for those countries is so much cheaper.
	Heathrow is another great example of a failure of co-ordination between Departments to ensure that the gateway to Britain is something of which we can be proud. The Heathrow experience is now listed as most business people's first bad impression of Great Britain, yet no one takes responsibility for co-ordinating all the agencies, organisations and Government Departments so that we can try to correct that.
	A recent report by Deloitte shows that there is an absence of proper Government support that would allow the United Kingdom to punch above its weight when it comes to tourism. The last tourism Bill to pass through Parliament did so in 1969. We are overdue an assessment of where British tourism stands. One industry that could have been helped is the pub industry. I am sure that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, are a supporter of your local traditional pub, as many of us are. It is in such pubs that responsible drinking takes place. Sadly, 36 of those traditional pubs shut every week. Once they are closed, they are gone for good.
	What have the Government done to help those pubs? They decided to increase duty on alcohol. There are reasons why they did that, to do with tackling the booze culture, but the move affects traditional pubs across the board. Apparently, duties have gone up to negate the reduction in VAT, but when VAT goes back up again next year, will duties go back down? No. It is yet another whammy that will hit our traditional pubs.
	The reduction in VAT is viewed as a joke. Many small and medium-sized businesses in the tourism industry are already offering 15 per cent. discounts, so reducing VAT by 1, 2 or 3 per cent. is negligible; it has no impact whatever. The administrative changes needed to show the reduction in VAT will cost each retailer an average of about £2,300—and the change is to be for just one year. Tourism is important to Britain, yet we are not harnessing the opportunities that British tourism could provide. That attitude will not change until the Government start to appreciate this £90 billion industry, which accounts for 1.4 million full-time employees—that is 7 per cent. of the work force—and 200,000 small and medium-sized businesses.
	I shall conclude, because I know that time is against us. We enter the stormy seas of this recession poorly prepared, and we are all the more exposed as a result of failure to navigate the quickest course out of it. Instead of assisting small businesses, we are burdening them with higher taxes. Instead of helping banks to provide loans, the Government are loaning taxpayers' money to banks at 12 per cent. interest, which means that there is no liquidity to pass on. Instead of harnessing the full economic potential of the next generation, the Government are fuelling a cultural shift towards mediocrity.
	I fear that only a change in Government will invigorate people and bring about the seismic shift that is needed to reverse that flawed attitude. I hope that after that change, we will be able to rejuvenate the next generation, so that they stay in school until they are 18 not just because the Government tell them to, but because they want to; so that they seek a job not because otherwise they will lose their benefit, but because they have a skill on which they can build, that gives them a good salary and of which they can be proud. For the sake of Britain, the sooner the next general election is called, the better.

Edward Timpson: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to contribute briefly to this important debate on issues that are ever more relevant. In the six months for which I have had the honour of representing the people of Crewe and Nantwich, the issue of employment has never been far away. As the weeks have progressed, the issue has become more and more pressing.
	I am sure that none of us in the House wishes to see our constituents struggle as a result of losing their job or livelihood, and I am sure that we all do what we can to prevent that from happening, but one of the harsh realities of a recession is large-scale unemployment, and that seems particularly to be the case in this recession. A Local Government Association report suggests that there will be 230,000 job losses in the north-west by December 2010. In Crewe, there have been recent job losses in the public sector. There is the closure of local post offices and the imminent closure of the Royal Mail sorting office, with the loss of 600 jobs. As of last week, the third-largest Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs office in the north-west was to close, with a loss of up to 80 jobs. In the private sector, the car, manufacturing and retail industries are all prominent, with the likes of Bentley, Bombardier, Focus DIY, Woolworths, MFI and others all feeling the crunch in the current conditions, which will have a significant impact on the local economy.
	Crewe is synonymous with the rail and motor industries, which continue to provide the backbone of the local job market together with, in more recent years, the retail and service sectors. As the recession bites, there is an opportunity not only to secure the short-term survival of those industries and businesses but to prepare them for long-term sustainable recovery. I agree with the Government, albeit not necessarily on their suggested implementation, that we have been presented with an opportune moment to invest in the training and skills necessary to see us through the short and the long term. There is a huge dearth of skills, particularly in the engineering sector, which has been recognised by the Secretary of State himself. In Crewe, Bentley has 3,500 employees, and runs a successful apprenticeship scheme that it intends to expand, despite the downturn. Bombardier, LNWR, Freightline and other railway industries that are part of the Crewe railway network have waited a long time to ensure that their apprenticeship schemes are full, and they all have long waiting lists of people who want to join the industry.
	On 10 November this year, the Minister for the North West said:
	"The challenge we face is that within the next decade, large numbers of unskilled jobs will be replaced by high-skilled ones. We must ensure that the north-west workforce is not left behind."
	That is precisely why, with others—I am glad to see the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon), on the Front Bench, as he was involved in the Westminster Hall debate on the issueI have advocated the overwhelming case for a national railway skills academy in Crewe that is employer-led and meets the short and long-term needs of an industry that is getting back on its feet and is on the rise. This could not be a better moment, from the Government's perspective and for the Opposition, for such an initiative to be put into practice.
	Not all the employment difficulties are a direct result of the downturn. The public sector work force in Crewe have been hit hard by the closures that have been announced of the Royal Mail sorting office and the HMRC office, both of which are unconnected to the credit crunch. Both consultations began before the economic crisis, yet the Government have seen fit to continue with that folly, despite the need for those jobs in future. As a consequence of the independent Lyons review of public sector relocation, the Government recognised the need for the transfer of civil service jobs from London and the south-east to the regions, and the review said:
	The Government is committed to improving the efficient delivery of public services, boosting regional economic growth and bringing government closer to the people, through greater decentralisation and devolution.
	By making those announcements on HMRC and Royal Mail in Crewe, however, they have done the exact opposite. They have started to centralise those systems, taking away local jobs and services at a time at which they are most needed.
	In July 2003, the then Minister for Employment and Learning said that
	recent job losses in the north-west make co-ordinating the response by Government, education providers and local communities essential.
	It appears in Crewe, however, that the Government have not learned that lesson, and good-quality public sector jobs have been lost, with no proper consultation with the local community. Along with that, there is a loss of valuable local knowledge and expertise, which will have a direct effect on local families and businesses.
	The two Government Departments responsible for the restructuring of both Royal Mail and HMRC worked independently of each other, with no apparent thought given to the overall consequences for the local economy, which flies in the face of the concept of joined-up government and of a co-ordinated approach.
	The Government's response to the vehement and united campaign to keep open the HMRC office in Crewe was particularly depressing for two reasons. First, by moving local public services away from local people, the Government are doing the exact opposite of the commitment given in response to the Lyons review. Secondly, by not pursuing a local strategy to deal with the recession, places such as Crewe are being hit disproportionately. In a town that still relies heavily on its manufacturing and motor industries, the opportunity to keep efficient, dedicated, valuable, local public sector staff in work has been missed. That would have softened the blow and given the local economy of Crewe and Nantwich the platform on which to rebuild. It is not too late for both Government Departments to grab that opportunity.

Phil Willis: It is always a joy to sit in on debates and hear so many speeches from hon. Members in all parts of the House who bring to bear what is happening in their constituencies. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr. Timpson) did exactly that from his own perspective.
	I was struck earlier by the comments of the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) when, as he always does in the House, he gave a staunch and steadfast defence of British science and argued strongly for continued investment in it. His comment about what we should not do during the recession was interesting. If one point that I make tonight should be taken on board it is that we must not cut back our investment in science, particularly in basic research. It is basic research that creates the bullets to fire at wealth creation, with the advantages that that brings.
	There was a suggestion in the hon. Gentleman's comments that there is a dichotomy between basic research, and translational research and wealth creation. We must not make that mistake. I said earlier in an intervention on the Secretary of State that last Monday I was at Honda Formula 1 at Brackley, not knowing that a week later it would be up for sale. Speaking to the great engineers operating at Honda Formula 1, it was interesting to learn that they are developing cutting-edge technologies, which must be changed from race to race in order to compete and to shave a fraction of a second off a race time. One of the most impressive elements that right hon. and hon. Members who visited the site were shown was a new composite gearbox. Nobody believed that a gearbox could ever be made from composite materials. The conventional technology is to make it out of some alloy or steel material, but that is extremely heavy. The composite gearbox was developed as a piece of technology purely in order to drive down the weight of a car so that it could go faster.
	The point of bringing this development to the attention of the House is that the technology could have the most profound effect by reducing costs in the motor industry and the transport industry, because as soon as the weight of the gearbox of a bus or a truck is reduced using composite materials, there are massive savings in energy use by those vehicles. Yet when we were speaking to Ross Brawn, the chief engineer at Honda Formula 1, it emerged that no member of the Government had ever been to see how those technologies could be transferredalthough, to be fair, the technology strategy board had had a meeting at Brackley just a few months earlier. It is rather sad that the technology strategy board goes, Members of the House of Commons go, and then Honda Formula 1 closes.
	Technology transfer does not simply come out of universities into companies. It also comes from companies into other companies and into universities. It is a cyclical process, rather than a straightforward linear one. I am delighted that the debate this evening has concentrated on skills and that through the Bill in the Queen's Speech, the Government continue to argue that skills are at the heart of productivity and at the heart of the agenda, and that we must not take our eye off the ball.
	Every single inquiry that I have been involved in since becoming the Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, and now the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee, comes back to a fundamental issue: we are not producing enough young people with science, technology, engineering and maths backgrounds to become the wealth creators of tomorrow. That point was made by the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson), who is no longer in his place. Every business we speak to says exactly the same thing, and every university makes the same claim.
	According to the Royal Society's research, during the whole of the period between 1996 and 2007, less than 12 per cent. of all the children who left our schools took an A-level in biology or maths, less than 7 per cent. took one in chemistry and less than 6 per cent. took one in physics. As we have seen as the bubble has burst, we cannot rely on a service-led economy, a large proportion of which is dependent on financial services, and simply believe that in that way we can pay our way as a nation in the 21st century. We have got to start making and manufacturing things again, and to do that we have to have a stem base. There is nothing in this new Bill, other than structures, to deal with the underlying problems with our economy.
	The Leitch agenda underpins much of the Government's thinking, and Lord Leitch's report was an excellent analysis of where we were going, but it was a 2004 to 2006 analysis. To be fair, the Government's response was to accept Lord Leitch's recommendations, but his report is all about upskilling and qualifications. The idea that qualifications equal skills, equals productivity is in my view a flawed equation. We need to look again at Leitch. Yes, we should deal with his analysis, but the Government should have the courage to recognise that if, by this time next year, there are 3 million unemployedGod forbid that we ever get to that stateit is not the NEET group, those not in education, employment or training, who are of the greatest significance to our economy and nation; it is the 3 million who were in work but are no longer, and who need not simply upskilling but reskilling. That is at the heart of what the Government should be concentrating on in the Bill, when it is amended.
	I compliment the Government on the issue of apprenticeships, however, which is dealt with in the Bill. I do not want to argue about whether apprenticeships were better in the past or there is a greater vision now. The reality is that this is the first Government during my lifetime who have said on education and skills training, Let us have a target of 400,000 apprentices by 2020. I do not believe that they can possibly get to 400,000 quality apprenticeships by 2020, but it is an objective worth pursuing. We must not pursue it, however, simply as a quantity target. If we do not ensure that those apprenticeships are of a high standardif we dumb down the brandwe will do far more to disadvantage people following apprenticeships than before.
	I ask the Minister please not to get hung up on the issue of making an offer. Simply saying to tens of thousands of young people, We will guarantee you under the law an offer of two apprenticeships, provided that you have the relevant qualifications, is not achievable, in my view. It is a laudable objective, but translating it into law means that targets will have to be manipulated in order to be met, which would be wrong. We have to have more employers involved in apprenticeships. In the boom times, one in 10 employers has engaged with apprenticeships. Why on earth will they do so in the down times when, traditionally, training is one of the things to be cut? My plea to the Minister is to be realistic when he starts putting this proposal into operation. He will get the support of the House if he does not get hung up on false targets, and if he is realistic about his objectives. Members on both sides of the House want the Government to succeed in the skills agenda, where frankly, we have all failed in the past.

John Howell: The Government paint a rosy picture of apprenticeships and of the skills of the nation as a whole. However, there is a great difference between the picture given for external consumption abroad and what the statistics say at home. According to the UK Trade and Investment website, we should wonder why we need this debate at all. Having said that employment is at a record level, it goes on:
	The strong skills base in the UK is reflected in its excellent record of attracting major foreign investors.
	Perhaps the website has not been updated for some time, but the reality is somewhat different. Many businesses find it difficult to find staff with the right skills. Five million adults are functionally illiterate and 17 million have basic numeracy problems.
	Local companies do not need to be told by the Government about the benefit of apprenticeships. Having visited a number of companies in my constituency, including manufacturing and engineering companies, I can say that they know the benefits of apprenticeships all too well. Indeed, at one company the managing director had come up by just that route; he praised his apprenticeship not only for the engineering skills but for the general business skills that it had given him. He became able to see the perspective of the business as a whole, which made him confident enough to carry on as managing director.
	Many of the businesses that I have mentioned have recently run apprenticeships; such businesses are in the best position to know what type of apprenticeships they need and when in their own business cycles apprenticeships should be taken on. They do not need to be strong-armed into apprenticeships, but for now they are preoccupied with the banks' withdrawal of facilities, the increase in national insurance, the management of cash flows and the staving off of making redundancies among long-serving, already skilled staff. They are battling to try to keep the jobs that they have.
	The Government talk of demand-led apprenticeships, but clearly they see demand from only one sidethat of the individual. Demand also needs to be understood from the company side. Good apprenticeship schemes cannot be conducted in isolation from businesses, but should work with businesses. Hopefully, local learning and skills partnerships provide a route for that. My county council, of which I am still a member, has ensured that its learning and skills partnership is led by a senior local business man, and it is all the better for that. However, businesseseven small and medium-sized enterprisesare not resistant to training. I recent visited a training provider, Henley college, in my constituency, and its representatives were full of praise for how local SMEs were committed to training and employment way beyond the apprenticeship. However, there is a need for business flexibility so that SMEs can choose the best route for themselves. That route will change over time.
	The public sector is not as behind as the Government like to make out. What they say might be true of Whitehall, but the Minister may like to consider the case of some local councils. My county council now has about 50 apprenticeships, ranging from social care to outdoor education to civil education and some administrative areas.

Rob Marris: With respect, it is the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) who is not being clear. On at least two occasions when opening the debate he referred to the fact that there were about 3,200 apprenticeshipsI cannot remember the exact figurein central Government. That is a low figure, but it relates only to central Government. He completely overlooked what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills and I said about apprenticeships in local government, which have also been mentioned by the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), and about apprenticeships in the NHS.

John Howell: I am sure that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench appreciate the role played by local government in apprenticeships.
	I am encouraged that local groups of SMEs are coming together to consider the provision of support and training as a group, often on a self-help, mutual basis. That is certainly happening in my constituency. However, business is suspicious of Government involvement in apprenticeships and training for good reason. The Train to Gain exercise is widely seen as a one-size-fits-all approach that takes no account of the specific needs of areas, even within an area such as a constituency, and it is widely seen as complex and confusing. Furthermore, there are doubts about whether it adds anything new and whether there is any real test of additionality in what it delivers.
	No one will miss the Learning and Skills Council, but there is no confidence that what replaces it will be any better. After all, its constant reform has been described by the general director of the British Chambers of Commerce as a constant reshuffling of deck chairs that has held back progress in vocational qualifications. There is no confidence that the Government will be able to simplify matters or avoid interference. Even where there has been a transfer of funds to local government, one need only see the constant stream of circulars and departmental memos that hit the desks of almost all senior council officers to realise that the Government regard local government as nothing more than their own local Executive arm. We need to ensure that bureaucracy is genuinely removed.
	Let me turn finally to the provision of employment training. The Government have consistently missed the point as regards the difficulty of providing skills and employment services in a rural environment. A rural environment involves greater expense. Fewer providers operate in it, there is less choice for the individual, and there is almost no travel to get about in order to do the training. That has an impact on the job prospects of some of the most vulnerable people. Let me give two examples from my own constituency that arose as recently as last week.
	A training and support consultancy for horticulturalists, which is doing extremely good work with people with various disabilities, is likely to have great difficulties in continuing because of the burdens placed on it as a result of the shake-up of procurement within the Government. If it does continue, there is likely to be a reduction in the amount of time that people with disabilities spend on individual modules in the training schemes. That is a great shame, because this is an example of tackling the barriers that people face while providing them with real experience.
	The second example concerns ex-offenders in my constituencyeven Henley has some ex-offenderswho have been ordered to get on to courses but have to go as far as Oxford. That may not seem a huge distance to Members, but it is a very tortuous route. The buses do not run on time, and it may be necessary to take several different ones. The scheme is designed for failure. That is not how we should proceed. The Government need to acknowledge that the rural dimension is special and that we need to take that into account.

Andrew Stunell: I do not have long, but it would be remiss of me not to commend the maiden speech by the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy), which was assured and witty. Let me also put on record my strong support for what my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) said from the Front Bench about housing. I want to address my remarks to the quantity and quality of housing.
	The hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) said that the Government's intentions as regards the quantity of housing have been seriously undermined over the past six months. The small amount of social housing as well as a catastrophic fall in the private housing sector interact with the quality of housing. In England, we have the most expensive housing, the smallest number of houses in relation to households, and the worst quality of housing environmentally and otherwise. Housing produces 27 per cent. of this country's carbon dioxide emissions. The central point that I want to make to the Government is that as this recession develops, they will be strongly tempted to chase the quantity of housing and to sacrifice its quality. I urge the Minister not to do that. We have some 20 million homes at the moment, and at the current rate of building, 80 per cent. of them will still be there in 2050. If we got back to the level that the Prime Minister talked about in July, 70 per cent. of housing in 2050 would already have been built. We need new policies to ensure that new housing, including new social housing, is built to the very highest standards, but we also need to ensure that we tackle the problems with the existing stock. We need policies not just for the new housing, but for the 80 per cent. of it that will still be there in 25 years' time. We need policies that cut carbon dioxide emissions, cut people's bills and reduce fuel poverty. The Chancellor has said that he will do whatever it takes to tackle the recession, and I say to the Under-Secretary and the Government that tackling the problems associated with the existing housing stock would be a good four-way hitcutting carbon dioxide, cutting people's bills, cutting fuel poverty and providing jobs. The retrofitting of energy-saving measures to existing housing ought to be high on the agenda. That process would be assisted by a cut in VAT for alterations and renovations, which in turn would end the paradox of it costing more to alter buildings than to build new ones.
	We need legislative changes as well, and the process is not that difficult given that the law is already in place. I say without any shame that I promoted the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act, which received Royal Assent in September 2004. That Act provides the Government with the levers they need to bring new buildings up to standard to tackle climate change, to allow for the alteration and repair of existing homes and to improve building standards in existing housing stock. One of the current paradoxes is that someone replacing a roof put on in the 1960s is required to do so only to the environmental standards of the 1960s. Many people would say that that was absurd. The process does not require zillions of pounds of public cash, but the Under-Secretary must implement the provisions of the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act, which the Government and all parties supported in 2004.
	My plea is that the Government should not chase housing numbers at the expense of sound environmental quality, and that they should make a resolute startalbeit an unnecessary four years lateon getting existing homes properly insulated and updated. They should tackle climate change, secure more jobs, tackle fuel poverty and give people well-being in their homes.

Bob Neill: This has certainly been a wide-ranging debate, and hon. Members on both sides have brought to bear a considerable wealth of experience from their constituencies and their backgrounds, which was an advantage. For that reason, and because of the time constraints, I hope that Members will forgive me if I do not go into detail about all of their points. I would like, however, to join hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) on an excellent and well-received maiden speech. It was not that long ago that I, as a by-election entrant to this House, was in the same position. We all wish him well, and hope to hear from him again in the future.
	It was apparent that a common theme ran through both elements of the debatea litany of failure on the part of Government policy on skills and housing. My hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) dealt with skills at some length in his opening speech, and I will therefore not go into as much detail on that topic as I will on housing. It is important to reinforce, however, that evidence introduced by hon. Members strongly supported my hon. Friend's point. In the skills agenda, we suffer from a huge over-engineering and complexity in the systems for delivering desirable objectives. There are more funding streams and agencies than one would find in the wiring diagram for a modest-sized cruise missile. No wonder it is difficult for those seeking to enter the skills systemnever mind businessesto navigate. Greater simplicity and clarity would be a huge advantage, hence my party's proposals to concentrate heavily on apprenticeships, which have been referred to repeatedly in this debate, and to ensure an emphasis on practical learning, vocational skills and the needs of business, particularly small and medium-sized businesses. I am afraid that the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills does not seem to have learned that lesson.
	On housing, DIUS and the Department for Communities and Local Government at least share one thing in common: they seem almost to be in a competition to see how many initiatives and pledges can be abandoned. It is a bit like a competition between Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor to see who has the most discarded wedding rings on their dressing table.  [ Interruption. ] I know that it was a long time ago for the Under-Secretary, but I am sure that he will have read about it in a history book. If he goes back to Madonna, perhaps he will get the same flavour, but it would be good for him to go back a little further.
	Let me remind the Minister of some issues closer to home. We have seen the collapse of delivery in the Government's housing policy. The root of all our problems is that not enough homes are being built and it is this Government who are failing to build them. On average, 31,000 fewer homes are being built a year than under the previous Conservative Government. Fewer affordable homes are being built. Not once in all these years have the Government built as many affordable homes, which are at the sharp end of need, as were built in any equivalent year under the Major and Thatcher Governments. That is a lamentable failure of the most vulnerable and the most in need.
	The private housing sector has also been subject to failure. No wonder there is so much legitimate concern about repossessions, to which hon. Members have referred. Why is that such a difficulty? Not only is there a lack of supply arising from the Government's policies, but the explosion of easy credit exacerbated the problem and pumped up the housing market in an unsustainable fashion. Who is responsible for driving that?  [ Interruption. ] It is no one on the Conservative Benches, as the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) well knows, but the Prime Minister, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and now as Head of Government. Who personally removed the Bank of England's power to call time on bank lending and who stoked up an unsustainable housing boom? It was the Prime Minister. Now that the consequences are coming home, it is ordinary hard-working families who are having to bear the brunt.
	Abandoned ideas litter the Department for Communities and Local Government a bit like the abandoned gun carriages that littered the road from Moscow back to Paris in 1812. There has been a full-scale retreat by the Government on those policy issues.

Rob Marris: War and Peace.

Bob Neill: We could probably have read War and Peace in this debate.
	Hon. Members will remember that there used to be a target to build 3 million homes by 2020. Then it ceased to be a target and became an ambition. What happens to a target that becomes an ambition? It becomes an aspiration. Now I read from the new Minister for Housing that the ambition has become a challenge. What it comes to is this: a target that becomes an ambition, which then becomes an aspiration, which then becomes a challenge, turns out to be a pipe dream and a confidence trick on the British people.
	The Government have dropped another target, on eco-towns, to which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) referred. That target, too, is now an ambition and will become an aspiration and then a challenge, so at least the Government are consistent in the methodology and the words that they use. That is a skill that they have acquired at any rate, and we should be grateful for that.
	Finally, there is the social homeBuy scheme, which relates to a matter of real concern. People who are struggling to keep their homes are subject to acute pressure, but what did we get to address that? We got a particularly cruel situation. Hopes were raised by a scheme that it was said would assist some 10,000 families over two years, but how many families have in fact been helped? At this time of particular need, 235 families have been helped. That is a shameful and abject failure by the Government in the very years when one would have thought that they would have more to do. Ministers must understand that the failure of the social homeBuy scheme naturally makes the public hugely sceptical about the latest initiative to assist people with mortgage arrears.
	Once again, that latest initiative is an interesting scheme. We were first told by the Prime Minister with his usual hyperbole that all the major lenders had signed up, only to find that just two had gone into any detail about the assistance to be offered. As everyone said, it is only by seeing the devil in the detail that we can understand the concerns about the scheme.
	What is sad is the real lack of initiative and the real lack of joined-up government. As Members have said, we are facing a recession that will test our economic resilience to the utmost. That is why the skills agenda is so important and why focus and determination are so important. The recession will test our social fabric to the utmost and nowhere is that more apparent than in housing. The Government's lack of imagination and their willingness to fall back on soundbites are things that the British people will not forget.
	Housing is one of the greatest concerns of the British people. They work hard, they hope for and have an aspiration to have a decent home: it is the most basic of natural instincts. When the Government offer up ideas that they then casually abandon in a serial manner, it is no wonder that people lose confidence in what they can do and achieve. This is not the only instance where we have seen that problem, as we also saw it in the past. Once again, the Government are behaving in a way that causes the British people to lose faithnot in the Government themselves, although they certainly will in time, but sadly in the institutions of democracy. That is a serious failure of the Government in respect of the trust that people have placed in them. There is still time, if they could only get their act together, to do something constructive. On current form, however, what we are going to get is yet more spin, yet more soundbites and complete inaction on a key area of policy.

Iain Wright: I begin by joining the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) in paying tribute to all the contributions to tonight's debate. Hon. Members brought their experience, knowledge and considerable expertise to bear on the debate, which greatly benefited from it.
	I start by paying particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) for his high-quality, witty and insightful speech. I have a great deal of affection for hon. Members who come here following by-elections. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst did that, and I did so about four years ago as a result of the previous MP representing Hartlepool, my noble Friend Lord Mandelson, moving away, although I do not really know what happened to that individual! After 11 years of a Labour Government and with the biggest financial turbulence the world has seen since the first world war, it is striking that my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes was able to win that by-electionand win it so decisively. That is testimony, first, to the policies that the Government are advancing and, secondly, to the personal qualities of my hon. Friend. He comes to the House with a formidable reputation in matters of education and skills; on the basis of his speech tonight, I am sure that we shall hear a lot more of him. He will be a true asset to this place.
	The hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) displayed his usual smooth and articulate manner to the House, but I have to say with the greatest respect to him that he was somewhat complacent and disparaging about the success of a generation of young learners. He mentioned the importance of freedoms that incorporation in the 1990s brought to further education colleges in his area and othersand they were quite rightly welcomed, so I fully agree with him about that. He failed to mention, however, that FE colleges were not quite so grateful for the cut in sector fundingby 7 per cent. in real termsduring the four years up to 1997 or for the fact that earmarked expenditure on FE capital under the Major Government came to a grand total of zero. Public investment in adult skills since 1997, in contrast, has been transformed. It has increased from 3.8 billion in 2002-03 to 4.7 billion in 2008-09 and is planned to increase to 4.9 billion in 2009-10.
	The UK has made strong progress in recent years, particularly in helping those with the lowest skills. Apprenticeship starts have increased from 65,000 in 1996-97, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mentioned, to 184,000 in 2006-07. Crucially, the number of people completing apprenticeships has trebled. In England, the proportion of people of working age with no qualifications has fallen by almost 6 percentage points from more than 17 per cent. in 1997 to more than 11 per cent. in 2007. About 75 per cent. of economically active adults aged 18 and over are now qualified to at least level 2, which is a formidable record of which we can be very proud.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) made some important points about the marine and coastal access Bill. Perhaps more importantly, he brought to bear his considerable expertise in science and his history of teaching in a university under a Conservative Government. He mentioned the brain drain in the 1980s and 1990s, which has been stopped and reversed to the point at which senior international academics and students are now attracted to British universities. He mentioned funding for science and how important it was that it continued, which was echoed in the excellent contribution by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis). Let me point out to the House the details of such funding over the past dozen years.
	In 1997-98, the science budget was 2.4 billion; it is now 5.6 billion, and will be 5.9 billion in 2009-10. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East and the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough mentioned the importance of the exploitation and commercialisation of research in higher education, on which they are absolutely right. They are obviously aware of the work of the higher education innovation fund in England, which helps knowledge transfer activities between universities and firms. As a result, university research income from contract research and consultancy has trebled since 2000 to more than 1 billion a year, and income from intellectual property licensing has also trebled. One of the areas in which I am interested is that of so-called green-collarlow-carbonjobs, which can help to drive economic growth. It has been estimated that the overall added value in the low-carbon energy industry could be worth at least 3 trillion a year by 2050, and could employ more than 25 million people globally. Through the measures put in place by the Government, the UK is well placed to take advantage of opportunities for such technologies. The UK needs to build on that success by developing the appropriate skills, research and infrastructure base and making conditions conducive to innovation.
	The hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) described vividly and evocatively the pressures on both new supply of housing and the quality of existing housing stock. Her comments were echoed by the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell). He was concerned that we will go for quantity rather than quality. That is absolutely not the casewe need to ensure that we build homes to last, not to be condemned in 10 or 20 years' time.
	The hon. Member for Brent, East gave somewhat grudging support for the Government's package on repossessions. She will be aware of the Prime Minister's announcements on the day of the Queen's Speech with regard to the home owner mortgage support scheme. As part of a wider package of help for home owners, that will enable ordinary, hard-working households that experience a redundancy or significant loss of income to reduce their monthly payments to a more manageable level by deferring a proportion of the interest payments on their mortgage for up to two years. The country's eight largest lenders, who represent 70 per cent. of lending, have already agreed to support the new scheme and have pledged to work with the Government to implement it. That is on top of an earlier package to help to minimise repossessions, such as opening the mortgage rescue scheme to vulnerable households, fast-tracking the set-up of mortgage rescue schemes, and making the support for mortgage interest schemes more generous. We will not leave hard-working families who are frightened about losing their home high and dry, as happened in the 1990s. We will do whatever it takes to ensure that hard-working families can keep their homes, and to minimise repossessions.
	In an excellent speech, the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) mentioned the growth in redundancies in his constituency, which he said had not been affected in such a way by previous downturns. His comments were echoed in the contribution of the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr. Timpson).
	Let me put the position in context. This year, the number of people unemployed and claming benefits reached its lowest level for more than 30 years. The number of people in work increased by more than 3 million to about 29.5 million, the highest number ever. However, I do not want the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst to think that I am complacent. I am aware of the pressures on employment caused by the economic downturn.

John Hayes: Will the Minister give way?

Iain Wright: Very briefly.

John Hayes: The Minister has referred to unemployment and given some apparently impressive figures. He will know that the number of NEETspeople not in education, employment or traininghas increased dramatically. Does he expect it to continue to increase, or to fall?

Iain Wright: It is good to see the hon. Gentleman back from the pantomime, but this is a serious point. As with repossessions, we are keen to minimise the number of people unemployed as much as possible. We do not want people to say This is good for the economy: it is inevitable that we have some sort of recession and some sort of growth in unemployment, so we are investing an extra 1.3 billion in Jobcentre Plus and other services over the next two years to respond to rising unemployment. I believe that that will not only maintain but increase the support that we offer to people who unfortunately, as a result of the current global turbulence, may lose their jobs.
	The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst mentionedagain, in a thoughtful waythe frustration caused by the fact that some agencies, such as regional development agencies and local authorities, cannot gain access to funds in a coherent manner. The Government recognise that many businesses face real difficulties, and I think we have responded well by announcing a package of measures that will support small and medium-sized enterprises by addressing their top priorities: cash flow, access to finance, and training. Central Government are committed to paying businesses within 10 days, and RDAs are supporting that commitment. We are offering free health checks for businesses in England through the Business Link support services to help identify potential problems as early as possible, and we are providing financial informationproduced by the Institute of Credit Managementto help United Kingdom businesses to maintain cash flow, which is essential at this time.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned eco-townsafter 19 minutes, which was probably a record for him. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) also mentioned eco-towns, along with the problems involved in a judicial review. A court hearing will be held on 22 January next year. The case concerns the process as a whole, but the challenge is very specific to Middle Quinton. We believe that we have followed the right consultation process, and we will contest the case robustly. We are determined to meet the twin challenges of trying to increase housing supply and addressing environmental issues, and eco-towns offer an exciting way of doing that.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson) spoke with eloquence of his experience and analysed with great accuracy the industrial policy of previous Conservative Governments, which was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson). I was greatly interested by his comments about the trade union movement and its links, on our patch, with Durham university. He will be aware of the great work of union learning representatives, which has done much to upskill the work force. As a fellow north-eastern Member, I am aware of the links between businesses and colleges and how strong they are on our patch, particularlyas my hon. Friend said in his excellent speechthe link between Nissan and Gateshead college. I also agree with him about the central importance of local authorities in trying to adapt to harsh economic realities
	The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) was heavy on criticism but light on policy alternatives, which befits his position as a Front-Bench spokesman. I found the contribution of the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) somewhat curious: he seemed to suggest that in attempting to attract overseas investment, the country should not publicise our strengths and competitive advantage. He too was heavy on criticism and light on alternatives, and I would imagine, with the greatest respect to him, that it will not be too long before he too is on his party's Front Bench.
	The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr. Kennedy) mentioned employment in his constituency, and his fear that we might return to the 1980s when adult male unemployment stood at 50 per cent. He mentioned the problems involving Tarmac, which I shall pass on to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland.
	The challenges facing Government are clear. We need to help people through these tough times and respond effectively to economic downturn. We need to prepare for the upturn, and lay the foundations for long-term prosperity and sustainable growth.
	The measures we announced in the Gracious Speech offer real, practical help for families, businesses and communities in these difficult times, but we are also planning for the future, taking the decisions now to help the country prosper and thrive over the longer term.
	 The debate stood adjourned. (Order, this day)
	 Ordered, That the debate be resumed tomorrow.

Business without Debate
	  
	Estimates

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 145),
	That this House agrees with the Report [3 December] of the Liaison Committee. (Barbara Keeley.)
	 Question agreed to.

PETITION
	  
	Health Care (Sunderland)

Bill Etherington: When a Member has 12,280 petitioners in their constituency, they do not have to be particularly wise to know that they have a lot of disenchanted, disappointed or angry people. What makes matters even worse is the fact that this particular petition is on the subject of the national health service, where the Government have done extremely good work, and that it revolves around the current Darzi proposals, which will undoubtedly bring overall improvement to the country as a whole. Unfortunately, however, because of the way the consultation procedure is being carried out, we now have more than 12,000 people who are up in arms about the situation they find themselves in, and who are very worried about the way the national health provisions will affect them. I shall read out the petition in the hope that the Secretary of State will take due note.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of residents of Sunderland and others,
	Declares that they support their doctors in urging the Government to listen to local people and invest in every practice in their city to improve the health care of all patients in Sunderland, rather than in a small number of new practices which may benefit only a small percentage of the population.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Health to review and further invest in the funding of all NHS GP practices in Sunderland to ensure that health care improvements benefit the whole population
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	[P000292]

CONSULTATIONS ON POST OFFICE CLOSURES

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. (Mr. McAvoy.)

Richard Taylor: I am very privileged to be having this intimate exchange with the Minister. I am delighted to see that he will be replying. He knows the west midlands, and my part of it, well; indeed, he has been seen in dungarees driving a steam engine on one occasion. I shall also be fairly quick, as I am sure we all desperately want to get home.
	The Table Office changed the title of this debate. I wanted it to be a little more confrontational, because the full title I had put down was Meaningless consultations on Post Office closures. Perhaps the word that is now missing was felt to be too confrontational and therefore non-parliamentary, but I hope to prove that the consultation was not only meaningless but a complete sham. I shall also explain why we in Wyre Forest are experts in consultations.
	Everybody knew the Post Office had to trim its branchesthat it had to lose about 2,500 branches to remain viable. I was delighted when the Government announced the retention of the Post Office card account by post offices, because that avoided possibly a further 3,000 post offices becoming unviable, and I still hoped that the network change programme, which was going to public consultation, might actually be a real consultation and that there would be scope for changing the proposals if we could produce good grounds for doing so. Sadly, that did not happen and it was a rubber-stamping exercise.
	For our area of Herefordshire, Worcestershire and the west midlands, the six weeks' consultation on the network change programme ended on 7 October. As we knew that it was to be scrutinised by Postwatch, the independent watchdog, we were hopeful that it would be open, fair, fully monitored and fully scrutinised. In Wyre Forestthis situation was typical of many constituenciesfour branch offices were scheduled for closure. There was no argument about two of the closuresone of the offices was tiny and had few customers, and the other had not had a postmaster for quite some timebut there were tremendous arguments about the other two proposed closures.
	Those two post offices were not loss making, and one was providing a vital service to a specific residential community. The other was providing the only banking facility to serve one of the main entrances to the town in question. As the Minister knows, I am talking about the road that runs from the Severn Valley Railway station. The road contains the county court, the magistrates court and about 48 small and medium-sized businesses, which need this particular office to do all their banking. Many of these are single-handed businesses, and the alternatives now offered to them mean that they have to use their car to go to a different office. If they choose to go to the one in the centre of the town, they face enormous queues, parking is difficult and expensive and instead of their being able to walk down the road for five minutes or less, their journey will take an hour or more.
	The important local responses were sent to the Post Office by the closure date, and my own was copied to Postwatch. I gave details of the vital nature of those two branches, I enclosed petitionsthey had 677 and 777 signatures respectivelyand I pointed out some of the inaccuracies in the consultation details. Unanimous support for the two offices was provided in a detailed response from Wyre Forest district council. I listed the local businesses and gave details, because a survey carried out by the council had found that of the 30 businesses that had responded, some 20 used this particular branch two to four times daily. They had no convenient alternative, not only for postal work but for banking and the cashing of cheques.
	Having done my jobI had met the sub-postmasters, councillors and constituents, and I had got my reply in on timeI sat back to wait. The consultation ended on 7 October, and we heard nothing until 28 October, when the decision to close all four post offices was publishedwhat we had done had made no difference at all. Prime Minister's questions happened to be taking place the next day and, to my amazement, I managed to catch Mr. Speaker's eye. I had tried to phone Postwatch that very morning and, after being given the runaround on the phone, I discovered, at that late date, that it had ceased to exist as a separate organisation on 1 Octoberbefore the end of the consultationwhen it had merged into Consumer Focus. The Prime Minister kindly said that he would talk to me about appeals against closures, but, realising that his diary was much fuller than mine, and on the advice of his Parliamentary Private Secretary, I put a few questions to him on paper. I asked how the consultation could be fair if the independent scrutineer had been merged and had taken its eye off the ball at that time.
	On 4 November, I received an e-mail from the chief executive of PostwatchI am sure that the Prime Minister had sent my letter straight on to him. He apologised for giving me the runaround on the phone but, more significantly, he apologised because a vital letter, which was supposed to have been copied to all MPs on 13 Octobera fortnight before the closure decisions were finally madehad never been sent. It was not until after the final decisions had been made that MPs discovered that Postwatch had not taken into account any of the detail of the consultation responses that had mostly been sent to the Post Office. I appear to have been the only person to realise that if we wanted Postwatch to look at those submissions, we had to send them directly to Postwatch.
	I had an e-mail on 12 November from Consumer Focus that made me even crosser. It implied that no one in the business community had replied to the consultation, because no one had sent a response direct to Postwatch. Even the district council's very full response had not been acknowledged by Postwatch. I had another e-mail from Postwatch at that stage, which said:
	I can confirm that no local businesses wrote direct to Postwatch in favour of retaining Comberton Hill. We only received one letter from a customer during public consultation which did not raise this particular issue. We do not have the opportunity to examine the full responses that are sent by customers direct to Post Office Ltd but we do receive a summary of responses received by them for each proposed closure following the end of public consultation.
	So Postwatch does not see the responses unless they are sent directly to it. Postwatch also said that it has
	three main sources of information...customers raising issues direct with us...customers copying to us their letters and emails to Post Office Ltd...and the summary of responses that Post Office Ltd. prepares.
	So we as MPs did not know, until far too late, that those crucial responses had never been seen by Postwatch, the scrutineers of the whole exercise.
	Kidderminster's local paper,  The Shuttle, had a front-page banner headline reading Postbotch? Watchdog accused of falling asleep on duty over closure of vital post offices.
	I had two reasons for applying for this debate. The first is general and the second is local. The general issue is about consultation. I have demonstrated that this consultation process was flawed. I was elected in the first place after an extremely flawed consultation process on hospital closures, and I said in my maiden speech:
	The wider issues on which I was elected are to campaign for...openness in decision making and against the use of spin, and for a greater voice for ordinary people in major decisions that will affect them.[ Official Report, 26 June 2001; Vol. 370, c. 549.]
	In health, we have come a long way, because soon after I was elected the Government set up the Independent Reconfiguration Panel for the NHS. That panel is now being used more and more, and has just produced an up-to-date report entitled Learning from Reviewsan overview.
	The panel has carried out 14 full reviews and in three of them it did not support the authorities, which emphasises its independence. In four cases, it supported the authorities. In the other seven, it supported the authorities but with conditions, and with the sensible condition that replacement services had to be in place before changes were made.
	The Department of Health is consulting in a meaningful way. If one Department can do that, other Departments ought to be able to, particularly when independent bodies are meant to be scrutineers. My first plea is that consultation should be looked at across all Departments to make it real and meaningful. As for the local issue, how can we move forward at home? We have lost two profitable, vital post offices and we have inadequate replacement arrangements.
	I have three questions. First, is it true that if after closure a postmaster attempted to reopen to provide some of the same services, he would lose all the compensation that he had been promised by the Post Office? Secondly, how is it practicable for other local organisations to step in and run a vital branch? I understand that in Stroud the local council is considering the possibility of reopening a local branch. Essex county council is doing the same. Would the Minister support those moves, as they represent local government responding to the needs of local communities?
	Finally, the Prime Minister kindly replied to my letter of 3 November only on 1 December. I want to read part of his letter in the hope that the Minister can clarify matters. The Prime Minister wrote:
	Turning to the review process for closure decisions after the local public consultation, this process can be invoked where Postwatch shows that, for an individual branch
	Post Office Ltd
	has not given due consideration to material evidence received during the public consultation in coming to its decision.
	The huge problem is that Postwatch was not aware of all the major points that had been put forward, so how could it have said that the consultation had not been satisfactory? How could we, as MPs who did not get the crucial letter until far too late, do anything? The consultation in this case was a huge shambles and in a fair world the Government should order it to be redone. I am appealing to the Minister for answers and for any help.

Patrick McFadden: I congratulate the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor) on securing the debate at this perhaps later than planned hour. I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman and I know that he has pursued the issue with great tenacity and determination.
	The hon. Gentleman's principal concern, as he has outlined, is about how the recent consultation process operated in his constituency, so I shall not take up too much of his time by going over the background to the post office closure programme in general. He will know that that background is a drop in the number of customers of about 5 million a week in recent years and a network that is losing 500,000 a day. Of course, the Government do not see the Post Office as a purely commercial network and that is why through investment, subsidy and funding debt the Government will put about 3.7 billion into the network between 1997 and 2011.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned profitability and asserted that the two branches in his constituency were profitable. But profitable from whose point of view? When central coststhose supplied by the networkand sub-postmaster costs are taken into account, three in four post offices are not profitable but are in fact dependent on some kind of support. I counsel caution on the hon. Gentleman's part when asserting profitability.
	The programme for reducing the size of the network by about 2,500 from 14,000 branches has been taking place over the past year or so, finishing with the area plan that covered the hon. Gentleman's constituency and mine. I should make it clear that as a Minister I have played no part over the past year in selecting individual branches for closure. That difficult task is carried out by Post Office Ltd.
	The hon. Gentleman raised some specific concerns. He focused on the role of Postwatch in scrutinising responses to the local consultation and thus the basis on which Post Office Ltd reached its final decisions about the closure proposals in his constituency. Postwatch plays an important role in the process. It represents the consumer, and as the Prime Minister said in his letter to the hon. Gentleman, Postwatch is the trigger for putting an individual closure decision into a review process conducted jointly by Post Office Ltd and Postwatch. The hon. Gentleman used some harsh words, saying the process was all a sham and so on.
	There are two phases for proposals in an area plan. There is a pre-consultation phase, when Post Office Ltd discusses its initial plan with sub-postmasters and perhaps with local authorities and others in the area. During that phase about 10 to 15 per cent. of proposals are changed, depending on individual area plans. There is then a six-week public consultation, and over the past year about 91 closure decisions were withdrawn during that process, although a number were followed by replacement closure decisions.
	The hon. Gentleman said that he does not believe that Postwatch properly fulfilled its functions in the consideration of responses in his area, and that for two branches in particular, Comberton Hill and the Walshes, the process was not properly carried out. He raised two issues: first, Postwatch's incorporation into Consumer Focus, the new combined consumer body and, secondly, the consideration of specific representations made about the branches. As he said, he raised his concerns at Prime Minister's questions and subsequently in a letter to the Prime Minister. He talked about his difficulties in trying to contact Postwatch by telephone.
	The Prime Minister responded to the hon. Gentleman's concerns on 1 December. He referred to the incorrect contact information that I acknowledge was given out by Consumer Direct. I understand that Mr. Howard Webber, the chief executive of Postwatchwho remains in charge of the residual Postwatch role in the network change programmeapologised for the error in what the hon. Gentleman was told and for the failure to copy him into the letter to which he referred.
	Checks continue to be made in Consumer Direct about the information that is passed on. It is regrettable that the hon. Gentleman was not given the correct information when he called, but the critical question is whether that inhibited Postwatch in carrying out its proper role in the area plan, and I disagree with him that the merger with Consumer Focus stopped Postwatch from doing that. The situation was envisaged, and the Postwatch team working on the network change programme was kept on during the transfer so that it could continue its jobindeed, I spoke to Mr. Howard Webber today and he is still doing that. With regard to the closure programme that affected the hon. Gentleman's constituency, the chief executive of Postwatch attended the key meetings, so I am afraid that I do not agree that the merger in which Consumer Focus was created stopped Postwatch playing its proper role.
	Let me turn to the hon. Gentleman's second concern, which he raised in letters of 13 and 17 November to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. I gather that there may have been an issue to do with the hon. Gentleman not receiving a reply from me, but as far as I know, he wrote to the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. I am not aware of his having written to me directly on the matter. He will be aware that the process in government is that letters eventually find their way to the correct Minister, even if they were not sent to the correct Minister, and I have now replied to him.
	In that correspondence, the hon. Gentleman raised concerns about whether consultation responses sent by Wyre Forest district council and Robert Arthur Davies Ltd had been properly considered. It appeared initially that those responses may not have been seen by Postwatch staff before final decisions were signed off. However, I understand that Postwatch has confirmed that the Wyre Forest district council response to which the hon. Gentleman referred was received, logged and seen by the appropriate Postwatch staff at the appropriate time. Postwatch confirmed that to me today, when I checked.
	Postwatch has not found a record of having received a response from Robert Arthur Davies Ltd. The issue is whether that had a material effect on Postwatch's judgment on whether to recommend the branch in question for the review process. Both the responses were seen by Post Office Ltd before it reached its final decisions on the branches at Comberton Hill and the Walshes. The points made in both responses were reflected in the summary of responses prepared by Post Office Ltd and shared with Postwatch. It is important to recognise that those summaries of responses are the primary and most comprehensive channel through which the Post Office was able to consider and assess local issues and concerns about each specific closure or network change proposal in the past year. That is true not only of the plan covering the hon. Gentleman's constituency, but more generally, across the programme.
	My understanding is that, with regard to the hon. Gentleman's constituency and the branches that he is concerned about, some 14 responses covering concerns raised by businesses were included in the summary of responses. Postwatch believes that it had the necessary information to enable it to make a decision on whether to ask for a branch closure to be reviewed, and it decided not to ask for such a review. The reason for that decision is the proximity of alternative branches.
	I always tread carefully when it comes to local knowledge; the hon. Gentleman will have much more of it than me. However, I understand that Postwatch's view is that there is an alternative to the Comberton Hill branch 0.6 miles away. Kidderminster has three post offices and there are eight post offices within a 3 mile radius of the Comberton Hill branch. As for the other branch, there is an alternative office a similar distance from itabout 0.7 miles away. There are two post offices within a mile of it, and five alternative branches within 3 miles. Postwatch did not think that there were grounds for a review in those circumstances.
	Let me turn to the three questions that the hon. Gentleman asked me at the end of his speech. He asked whether sub-postmasters lose all compensation if they provide services that they previously provided in their post office. They do not lose all compensation. The compensation was negotiated with the National Federation of SubPostmasters, which represents sub-postmasters. Its general secretary thought it fair that an adjustment be made to the compensation package. He said, Why should taxpayers subsidise sub-postmasters for the loss of business that they are not actually losing? An adjustment is made, but I would argue that the compensation for sub-postmasters is still fair.
	I would also point out that the sub-postmasters of post offices closed under the previous Government did not receive any compensation at all. As for the question of whether third-party organisations can step in, I suggest that I write to the hon. Gentleman about what we have said about that, because letters have been issued by the previous Secretary of State setting out how that might happen. The hon. Gentleman mentioned Essex county council, for example. I have covered the review process, which is triggered by Postwatch if it thinks that there are grounds for doing so such as proximity to other branches and so on. In the case of the two branches to which he referred, Postwatch did not think that there was a case. It saw the summary of responses that was supplied, and that was its main source of information throughout the programme. I do not think that it was shamI do not argue that it was perfectbut I suggest that as the POCA decision has now been made, this is hopefully a period of stability for the network after the closure programme.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 House adjourned.